UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:00 – 0:0314 turns
Okay, good morning everybody. It's my pleasure to call to order this meeting of October 7th of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk please call the roll.
Roll call, called by Madam Clerk
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And to the republic for which it
stands,
one
nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice.
Okay, our next item of business is approving our minutes from our last meeting which was September 28th 2025. May I have a motion please?
Move approval.
Excuse me it was 23rd that's my eyesight here. 23rd move approval thank you Supervisor Hartman.
Second.
Thank You supervisor Nelson all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries CEO's report. We have Assistant CEO Wade Horton sitting in today. Anything for you?
No report this morning, Chairman.
Okay sounds good. Madam Clerk are there any announcements or changes to our agenda today?
Chair Caps and members of the board, I have a couple quick announcements this morning. We received a request from the department to withdraw A-21 from today's agenda. A- 21 is from the Public Works Department and is to consider recommendations regarding a contract for the habitat mitigation and monitoring for Foothill Road low water crossing bridge replacement over the Quiama River bridge number 51C0381 federal aid number BRLO5951 Thank you. Thank you very much.
And lastly for the Board of Supervisors methods of public participation and to provide public comment on general public comment or an item on the board's agenda, please see page 2 of the agenda. Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page two. If you have any questions please contact the Clerk of the Board's Office at area code 805-568-2240 again that number is 805 568 2240 and that concludes my announcements for today
Yeah and regarding the agenda I plan on making a motion of continuance to D1 regarding County Health but we can take that up when we get to it. Okay
Agenda Discussionitems moved / continued / pulled, click to expand
let's move to the administrative agenda would any board members like to pull items from the administrative agenda?
Chair Caps if I could pull A15, I need to recuse myself on that and then A22 I'd like to highlight that item.
What on A22? Okay, A22 and we have A5. A11? A11. And A13. And A13 okay I'll now entertain a motion to approve the balance of the administrative agenda except for those. So moved.
Second it was A15 that I need to recuse not A5 I don't sure if I got that down right A 5 also
a 5 is also been pulled the correct chair caps members of the board yes, a 5 has been pulled by the
a second
Okay all those in favor. I motion passes okay we move to the resolutions madam clerk when you're ready let's move to resolution number one
Chair Caps and members of the board, administrative item number one is sponsored by Supervisor Caps. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the month of October 2025 as Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month in Santa Barbara County and joining us in person today we have Ken Opplinger and if you can please make your way to the podium I'll read the resolution.
Whereas we recommit ourselves to building a future where all people can feel safe, protected, empowered and deserving of relationships full of respect and kindness. And whereas domestic violence affects thousands of people in Santa Barbara County causes significant harm to the physical mental health of survivors and their families undermines their economic stability and overall well-being and is a strain on the conscious of our county And whereas while significant work lies ahead to make domestic violence a thing of the past, there are fierce advocates working tirelessly in Santa Barbara County to expand prevention efforts and provide greater access to safety and healing.
And whereas Domestic Violence Solutions provides emergency shelter, housing assistance, job and life skill training and more to thousands of survivors of domestic violence and their children across Santa Barbara County. And whereas during Domestic Violence Prevention Month we honor the tremendous dedication of advocates and service providers, honor the resilience and courage of survivors and recommit ourselves to standing with them for safety dignity and justice. Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara does hereby proclaim October 2025 as Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month in Santa Barbara County passed and adopted today.
Madam Chair, members of the board thank you very much we appreciate this I also just want to note that purple is the official color of domestic violence awareness month so thanks to all your support. For 48 years, DVS has been helping survivors of intimate partner violence across Santa Barbara County. We respond 24-7 to calls on our crisis line at 964-5245 to address everything from your mental and emotional health to your physical and financial health. And when necessary we will respond anywhere in the county from Carpinteria to Kiyama and Guadalupe to Goleta to bring survivors and their children to safety. So on this 36th anniversary of the observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month and on behalf of our board and staff thank you for this recognition.
Just a quick note of thanks to Domestic Violence Solutions. It's such an important organization, have been doing the work so quietly and steadfastly for so long and thank you Mr. Opplinger for serving and to the entire team, to the staff. Thank you Okay, Madam Clerk to the next
resolution please. Chair Caps and members of the board administrative item number two is sponsored by Supervisor Hartman it is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the week of October 5th 2025 through October 11th 2025 as National Fire Prevention Week in Santa Barbara County and joining us in person today we have fire chief Mark Hartwig. Mark if you can please make your way to the podium and anyone else you'd like to join with you?
And I'll go ahead and read the resolution. Whereas October 5th through the 11th has been declared National Fire Prevention Week, a time to reflect on the importance of fire safety education and prevention. And whereas the 2025 National Fire Prevention Week theme titled Charge into Fire Safety Lithium-Ion Batteries in Your Home as established by the National Fire Protection Association NFPA works to educate everyone about using lithium ion batteries safely And whereas the campaign stresses how important it is to buy, charge and recycle safely when it comes to lithium-ion batteries.
And whereas the three steps to safety include one when buying a product that uses a lithium-ion battery look for a safety certification mark such as UL ETL or CSA As this means it meets important safety standards. Two, always use the cords that came with the product to charge and follow manufacturer instructions. Three, charge your device on a hard surface do not overcharge your device and unplug it or remove the battery when is fully charged And four, do not throw lithium-ion batteries in the trash or regular recycle bins. Instead recycle your device or battery at a safe battery recycle location and whereas everyone is encouraged to visit the National Fire Protection Association website at www.nfpa.org for further lithium-ion battery information and educational materials.
Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors proclaims the week of October 5th through the 11th 2025 is National Fire Prevention Week throughout Santa Barbara County and encourages everyone to participate in fire prevention activities at home, at work, at school and throughout the community. Making Fire Prevention Week the beginning of a year-long commitment to fire safety passed and adopted today.
Supervisor Capps, supervisors. Thank you for having us this morning and recognizing Fire Prevention Week. I was with you earlier in the year to talk about larger lithium ion battery energy storage systems. This week is to really focus on the home. use of lithium-ion batteries, the proper use and as the proclamation spoke about used to the proper cords making sure that everything has the right seals and approvals storing and using in charging your batteries correctly at home. We have had a history, rather small but still impactful history of destructive fires due to the use or misuse of charging batteries in a workplace and at home.
Lithium ion batteries can be very reactive and very flammable when misused so one of the things I know I was personally guilty of is charging my phone under my pillow that's a big no-no You know, a lot of phones have very tight compact spaces between the battery and the hardware. And they're designed to dissipate heat not in between pillows and mattresses. So I think that's a very important thing here is to charge your phone on a flat surface and use the right cord. So with that thank you very much.
Supervisor Harmon.
Mr. Tan, Chief Tan quick question I noticed there's a receptacle down on by the elevator for batteries but how is it appropriate to get rid of batteries what should we do with them?
There are recycling centers, UCSB has one where you can recycle, leave your lithium ion batteries. We don't want to put them in the trash, we want to be aware of... I've had laptops where the batteries puff out so those can be very destructive especially in a landfill cause a major fire that we could be on for several weeks. So I would find your local recycling center that takes lithium ion batteries.
Okay we may need more of them in our county. Thank
you.
Next resolution please. Chair Kaps and members of the Board, Administrative Item number 3 is sponsored by Supervisor Kaps and Supervisor Hartman. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming October 10th 2025 as World Homeless Day in Santa Barbara County. And joining us in person today we have Tyson Halstead from SB Act. I'll go ahead and read the resolution. Whereas World Homeless Day is observed annually on October 10th to raise awareness of the needs of people experiencing homelessness and to highlight effective, compassionate responses. And whereas Santa Barbara County's theme for World Homeless Day 2025 is kindness can change a life.
A reminder that small acts of empathy and consistent support can open doors to stability in home. And whereas the County of Santa Barbara's Homelessness Assistance Programs, a division of the Housing and Community Development Department works
Roll-call vote Moved by Joan Hartmann
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every day to prevent and end homelessness through patient person-centered and caring connections. And whereas in partnership with the County of Santa Barbara's contracted partner agencies, this work includes supportive housing and case management, street and encampment outreach, temporary housing, safe parking, landlord-tenant relations and mediation, housing placement, employment support and emergency services.
And whereas these coordinated efforts reflect our community shared values and demonstrate that practical assistance delivered with dignity and respect changes outcomes. Now therefore, be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara does hereby proclaim October 10th 2025 as World Homeless Day in the County of Santa Barbara. Commend our staff and contracted partner agencies for their dedication and call upon all residents to join us in advancing solutions grounded in kindness collaboration and respect passed and adopted today.
And so thank you chair and members on the board for recognizing World Homeless Day and for continuing to bring attention to this issue that impacts every corner of our county. This year's point in time count found 2,436 people experiencing homelessness across Santa Barbara County a 24 percent increase since 2021. One of the most notable trends is the steady growth in vehicular homelessness. These numbers remind us that while progress is being made, the need remains great.
We know that homelessness is not a problem that any one agency or jurisdiction can solve alone. It takes collaboration across cities, the county, service providers, faith communities and neighbors, all of us working together towards shared solutions. We are deeply grateful for the county's continued investment in real solutions, housing supportive services and meeting people where they're at. And we're equally grateful for the many agencies and frontline workers who show up every day to do this hard and hopeful work. Thank you for your partnership and for honoring this day and the people it represents.
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Thank you for being here. Okay, next resolution.
Chair Capps and members of the board. Administrative item number four is sponsored by Supervisor Capps, it is to adopt a resolution of accommodation honoring the General Services Workday Implementation and Training Team, Sean Burns, Brant Markley, Rosario Reyes-Garcia, Christian Garcia, Austin Venezia, Abraham Cabrera, and Diana Estorga as October 2025 Employees of the Month in Santa Barbara County. And if those members can please make their way to the podium?
I'll go ahead and read the resolution. Whereas the General Services Workday ERP Implementation and Training Team has been committed to supporting the Workday ERP implementation projects since the project began, particularly through their participation in the development of procurement operations and capital project financial management functionality including leading training sessions and providing support and informational resources.
And whereas the team has been consistently dedicating many hours to the project, provide subject matter expertise and input. Develop training guides and deliver comprehensive training sessions for county departments in partnership with the Workday Support Organization focused on the goal of ensuring a smooth transition for stakeholders across departments. And whereas their collaborative spirit technical proficiency and dedication to the project have significantly contributed to the readiness success and stability of the Workday ERP financial systems and business processes as we go live Their actions and attitude embody the general services values of sustainability, creativity, integrity, partnerships and county values of accountability and customer focus.
And whereas their work in leadership has contributed to enhanced operational efficiency, streamlined procurement and project financial management processes And strengthen the county's ability to deliver critical services effectively. Now therefore, be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara does hereby acknowledge Sean Burns, Brent Markley, Rosario Reyes Garcia, Christian Garcia, Austin Venezia, Abraham Cabrera and Diana Estorga of the General Services Workday ERP Implementation and Training Team as the team of the month for October 2025 passed and adopted today.
Good morning, thank you. So I know last month the board recognized the workday phase one implementation and that this is a huge team effort by the county for the past 3 years so while we're recognizing our general services team here today they've been just one cog in the greater effort to get workday implementation across the finish line and they truly epitomize whole effort.
That's been a huge lift for the county, but this has been a significant collateral duty for my team here behind me and they've all had their regular day jobs for the last three years as well. And so I'm super proud of their efforts their teamwork and contributing to the greater effort of Workday. Thank you.
Congrats to the team. My mic wasn't on I just want to say congrats to the team it's a huge amount of work and we the board really appreciate it. Okay, we are going to move on to the administrative agenda those a few items that have been pulled Madam Clerk, I believe that's
0:19 – 0:2211 turns
A5. Pulled by the public. Chair Kaps and members of the board administrative item number five is from the Auditor-Controller's Office it is to consider recommendations regarding the June 30th 2025 fiscal year 2024 through 2025 and internal audit annual reports and we have one request to speak from the public on this item and we are going to remain here in Santa Barbara and go to Karen Hauenstein. Karen?
I believe Karen is making her way here. Is she in the room next door in the overflow? She
was here.
And while we are waiting for Karen, I think right now is a good time to make just a quick announcement. It looks like there's quite a few folks who've signed up for general public comment but I believe you have did mean and indicate to sign up for departmental item number one and I do know that there is some confusion with moving forward with that item today but if you do have comments for departmental item number one it would be more appropriate We're going to
move on to item number one. Is Karen not here? Karen Howenstein. All righty, we can perhaps trail this item and go to administrative item number 11. Yep.
Administrative item number 11.
Chair Kaps and members of the board, administrative item number 11 is from the County Health Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding acceptance of a grant award from Petco Love to Santa Barbara County Animal Services in the amount of $25,000 and there is a four-fifths vote required on this
Okay Supervisor Hartman. Chair Caps I pulled this only to say thank you to Petco, they're a corporation that really focuses on responsible pet care and education and adoption partnerships and this is for any purpose that has life-saving impact for pets in the county so it's very flexible money so thank you to Petco. That's wonderful
okay do we need a vote on this? I guess we do. So Supervisor Hartman is that a motion?
I move we accept the grant. I'll
second
motion a second all those in favor, please say aye. Aye motion carries next one is a
0:22 – 0:2414 turns
13 Chair caps and members of the board administrative item number 13 is from the fire department it is to consider recommendations regarding regional Fire Communications Center partner cooperative dispatch agreements
Supervisor Hartman.
Once again I pull this really just a shout out to our fire chief and to all the chiefs in the various cities, this represents years of effort to bring cooperative agreements finally to the councils and make it official for our regional dispatch so thank you very much Chief Hartwig.
Thank You Chief. Any other comments? Okay I'll entertain a motion Supervisor Hartman
Move staff recommendation.
I'll second.
All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Then I believe we have A15 when you're ready and that's just for
refusal Chair Kaps and members of the Board, Administrative Item Number 15 is from the General Services Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding appointment of mobile home rent control arbitrators. Santa Barbara County Code of Ordinances Chapter 11A-Mobile Home Rent Control
Yes thank you Chair Caps. As the owner of a mobile home unit in Santa Barbara County, the appointment of arbitrator may positively or negatively potentially affect my ownership of that and so I want to go ahead and recuse myself on this item. I'll be right back.
Sounds good. Okay any discussion or question on this item?
I'll move staff recommendation.
Second.
Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. I guess do we need a roll call vote? We're good?
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 · 1 under review
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Motion passes 4-1 with Supervisor Nelson recused.
0:24 – 0:2819 turns
Okay moving right along that brings us to a 22 Our last administrative item.
Chair Kaps and members of the Board, Administrative Item Number 22 is sponsored by Supervisor Nelson. It is to consider recommendations regarding the contribution of 4th District discretionary funds to the Cabrillo High School Stadium Improvement Project. Supervisor Nielsen.
Yes, thank you Chair Kapsch. I just wanted to highlight this project. Each board office has a certain amount of discretionary funds that we're able to spend in our community. In our office, we are spending $5,000 of those funds towards the effort of Cabrillo High School to build a stadium on campus. Cabrillo High School It is a one of our high schools in the Vandenberg Village area. And as we all know, the Lompoc Valley is often one of our more disadvantaged communities that doesn't have the same type of resources that we have in other communities throughout the county and so the Cabrillo Alumni Association and an athletic department is working on trying to raise the funds to build I'm going to A facility and they're looking for the community's help.
So I'm just happy to support this effort in the 4th District, we understand the importance of recreational opportunities for our youth and how important that is for the health of our communities so just wanted to highlight this item and make the motion to adopt this.
Madam Chair, I just have a question. So how much do you know about? How close are we getting there?
They still got a ways to go. The community is a smaller community so it's definitely has some challenges but they're definitely getting some contributions from alumni. We've had some professional athletes that had previously played at Cabrillo High School that are potentially involved as well so we're all kind of adding more to the kitty
as we go. I think Sandy Nesbitt and Chumash Indians also made That's a significant contribution. So yeah, I think I committed you need to twist my arm a little bit more because I think I had a commitment there and I want to make sure that I follow through on that as well so.
All right pretty good at twisting
arms so I will get
back to you thank you
Supervisor
Lavagnino.
So
again I'm making a motion to approve this allocation.
I'll second.
Okay we have a motion a second all those in favor? Aye. Motion carries Okay with that we have passed the balance of the, we've passed the administrative agenda. So we can move on to I guess it I don't want to make sure there's not confusion still remaining about public comment would it be best to move to a departmental item or just take public comment and be clear that Thank you very much. Thank you.
To our help that is up there in Santa Maria to see if these are for general public comment or perhaps one of our departmental items. So in the meantime we can go to the public members and see if indeed it is general public comment or on one of the departmental items, and then we can move them if they indicate it's for general public comment today.
Or we could just go to the departmental
item number 1 would that work? And we could take up general public comment later in the day.
Okay, is that okay with everybody? Let's do that. Since most folks are here for the departmental items. Great. Okay, Madam Clerk. Departmental item number one.
0:28 – 1:0421 turns
Chair Kaps and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the County Health Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the county health department's budget rebalancing plan to address a revenue shortfall for federal qualified health centers in fiscal year 2025 through 2026
Well I know it's not usual protocol but as as I mentioned, I would like to make the motion to continue this. I think it's in the best interest to give this more time we don't have a time pressure given the injunction at play here for stakeholder engagement. More information would guide the conversation with the public here. Stakeholder engagement, I can go into the rationale but I don't want to get too far into the conversation. I just wanted to see if there's consensus to that effect. I can explain myself more if that's helpful but I just feel as though with more stakeholder engagement that we'll likely hear about if we do continue this item The lack of it, both from the community but also stakeholders as well as I believe a need to understand the litigation and the time frame for the injunction would best serve us as a board to bring this up at a later date.
That's after really doing a lot of consideration over the last week and in consultation with our staff So that's my opinion.
Madam clerk chair caps and members of the board and before we proceed with a second on that motion I did just want to indicate to the public if any members of the public request to speak on the continuance of this item that we allow for that so if there are any members of the public that want to speak on the continuance of this item to please perhaps make their way to the podium to provide those comments
Yeah but we can talk about it first. Supervisor Hartman?
I would like to hear more. Sure, I serve on the CENCAL board this has been something I've been involved with now for some time and I would like it this is something that we may have a little flexibility on time but not a lot sure we have to transfer patients If you're in dialysis or you're pregnant or whatever, it takes a while to find a doctor. CENCAL is in that process of helping us to do that and so how long are you thinking? And I'd like to hear more of the reasoning.
No I appreciate that and I'll answer that question. It just became clear to me in the last, really the last week that none of the community that's been so linked with our undocumented during a very terrifying time was informed of any of the process and that really I think is important not just for the message but also really to make the transfer successful because these are trusted voices during a very terrifying time and it became clear to me that no information had been
conveyed. I'm willing, but I think that's a pretty absolutist statement that there has been no outreach. MICOP and other organizations do participate with CENCAL and have been involved in the Medicaid. Now they may not have Thank you very much.
I would like to understand more of the time frame that we do have. The care of our patients is first and foremost, Dr. Hammami, all of the folks that work in county health, that is their pledge, that is their commitment. I have no doubt that that has been the driving force of the work that has gone into this proposal as is those who are potentially facing layoffs and my heart goes out to them.
What really, the ire here that I have is the Trump administration that's targeting the most vulnerable And that should remain our focus and that's really the fear here, what is so frustrating and terrifying. Our partners, our providers have been fielding calls into some of us. Myself I should speak only for myself with a lot of confusion without questions and then when I look into the court case and litigation it does seem as though we do have some time here to understand this more, to explain it better to those who will really be communicating this to those patients.
And I would just like to ask for more time.
Would it not be helpful then to hear something and then continue it to at least get some discussion of this issue out there?
I'm certainly open to that, I just fear that some of the public, I mean it's fine public comment is always helpful but yes certainly we can do that and have the item be heard but my position is to not make a final decision
And I would be open to that, but I think if your concern is really and I share it this is complicated and people. It's just we've been working internally on this for some time now but not everybody in the community has heard about it so I think this would be an opportunity To show what a difficult position we're in as a county. And that we're committed and CENCAL is committed to making sure that there's a smooth transfer, that people will continue to receive Medi-Cal benefits and they will be connected with providers. So I think we need to get that information out today and not just continue it to some date in the future where we don't have an opportunity to really answer questions to the best of our ability now.
I
appreciate that. Other colleagues? Supervisor Nelson?
Yes, thank you Chair Caps. You know I would be supportive of a continuance either now or after presentation. It's been clear to me that there has been a lack of communication not just with the undocumented community but also our healthcare system partners during this process. I know there was some effort made late last week and early this week to try to close that gap but I do think we, there is still more to be decided here and to learn. We're often reactionary in this process And so it does seem a little premature with some of these things hanging out there still to be determined. So I would be willing to, like I said, continue at this point or at the conclusion of our presentation.
Supervisor Nelson, I mean Supervisor Leakes.
I just want to check out that support your motion. I believe if we continue it we will have better answers down the road for everybody and then we can give better reasoning to our decision so I'll second your motion
No, I haven't made the motion. You know, I don't want to. The last thing I want to do is cut short conversation. That's not my intention as chair. We've been receiving a lot of frustration for lack, I think a lack of information and this county, I'm really proud of how much we've stood with immigrant community Always, but particularly lately. And I think that has been lost in the way that this decision and these actions have been communicated. And I hope it's not too late, but I would like the opportunity to set this on a better course. And that's what I was hoping to do.
Supervisor Labadino?
Thank you Madam Chair. I'm not sure if we should be continuing it, but I do want to hear. I mean to me the lack of communication that. I think a lot of it was done maybe at top levels and maybe folks users. Of the system. You know might be a little bit confused. But And then, you know we can continue it and I have the same kind of concern about what does this day actually mean? How long is that going to last or is there a possibility there would be clawbacks if we continued provide service.
You know even after that there was an injunction so I kind of want to hear more about it but yeah I don't have any problem with not voting on something today
Okay, fair enough. I appreciate the dialogue ahead of this to maybe frame the conversation so thank you to my colleagues and we'll move forward with the item. Dr. Hamami? So just for clarification to those who wanted to speak on that item. We didn't read it into the record did we? So can we just, Madam Clerk, can you clarify for those who wanted to speak to D1?
Yes, Chair Caps and members of the board. And just to reread this item into the record we are discussing departmental item number one from the County Health Department it is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the county health departments budget rebalancing plan to address a revenue shortfall for federally qualified health centers in fiscal year 2025 through 2026 and we do still have a number of public members signed up for general public comments so if you You sign up for general public comment and you intended to speak on department item number one if you can please just see our clerk in the back or indicate While I have everyone's attention that the chair has indicated that she'll be giving priority to speakers who wish to speak for one minute.
All other speakers will have a maximum of one and a half minutes to speak if you would like to speak for one minute please begin lining up when the time comes, and again just wanted to clarify that a maximum of 1 minute and 30 seconds will be given to each speaker so if you have Already prepared remarks if you can please just minimum them to one minute and a half. Thank
you
Good morning, thank You madam chair supervisors Allow me to start by saying that, well first let me introduce our team. Lars Seffert who is our Deputy Director for Operations, Gus Mejia our Chief Financial Officer, Lindsey Walter our Deputy Director for Clinical Services and Dr. Phyllis Preciado who is our Chief Medical Officer. What we bring to you today is not an easy item. It's definitely something that we as a team had a lot of hard time in making that decision and I can say that many years in public service has, I thought that I was immune to something like that however this is very hard and what makes it even harder What we bring for you is not because we mismanaged funds or we overspent, or we did not perform. What we bring before you is something that is out of our control but it is very important to make that decision because it will allow us to sustain operations and will allow us to serve the majority of those that need us.
So with that let me start by saying While the item in front of you is not whether we are going to serve a certain population or not, the item before you is to address a loss of revenue that resulted from a decision that was made. And while they are one is the result of the other but not approving one is not going to lead to the other going away I just wanted to make that clear So there has been, as many know and we've been communicating that there has been media publications. There has been a lot of information that was disseminated that there has been recent changes in both the federal as well as the state budget and some regulations that are going to impact our county health centers. One specific one which is called the PRORA or the HHS Act or the HHS ban that everybody knows about is to extend federally qualified health centers or what are known as community health centers, which are what our five clinics at the county are.
To consider those as federal benefits and by extending that and designating them as federal benefits then the HHS ban would prevent us from extending federal benefits to those individuals that have an unsatisfactory immigration status It is important to emphasize that this doesn't mean that they lost their coverage. California is one of the states that still provide Medi-Cal coverage to those with unsatisfactory immigration status.
However, it does say that you cannot extend any federally funded services or federally mingled services or services that are designated as federal to this population So that was what happened on July 10th. Now, what does that mean to us? We serve almost 29, let's say 30,000 people that come with insurance that are managed by CENCAL who is the Managed Care Plan. These are Medi-Cal eligible insured patients According to CINCAL and the state, almost 25% of this population are designated as UIS or individuals with unsatisfactory immigration status.
We never knew who they were. We never asked who they were. We have two people that walk through the door with a CINCAL card. We serve them exactly the same. They submit, we submit the claims to CINKAL, we get paid. This is our rule. Now, unfortunately we are forced to say okay how do we know which population we are not allowed to serve according to that HHS ban.
Before we get there a lot has been circulated about the injunction and a lot has been and I'm sure many of the public comments are going to address well there is a litigation why are we jumping the gun? Why is the county health the first to do this Well, we are not the first. Actually there are other FQHCs that are doing this and I don't know if it's my role to make that public or not but if you ask CINCAL there has been another FQHE that also is asking for their population to also be reassigned So although there is a litigation and there has been a stay of litigation, but we do not know what the result is going to be. We do not know when that litigation might be lifted. It might be tomorrow. It might be in six months. It might be in six years.
We don't know. Taking that risk is playing Russian roulette with the health care of these individuals because You cannot reassign someone on a Friday and tell them, thank you very much but on Monday your new provider is going to be Dr. so-and-so and good luck with that. These are complex cases. Transition of care and coordination of care these are big words which I am more than happy to tell you what they mean but let me put a human face on that.
So I'm gonna share with you two stories of patients that we currently are involved in the transition of care. A 64-year old Spanish speaking male with a history of chronic kidney failure on dialysis, with a history of uncontrolled hypertension which is high blood pressure for those who do not know has a history of a stroke diabetes induced eye disease He's been seen at UCLA and is being considered for a renal transplant. The patient was recently seen at the hospital for acute respiratory failure due to fluid overload from uncontrolled blood pressure, requiring additional dialysis.
His daily medications include over 13 medications to maintain his health including daily insulin use. It is very difficult to keep him straight in terms of the medications and compliance he's supposed, and those drugs that he's supposed to be taking. He either misplaces the medication or does not have a clear understanding of what he should be taking. He has had multiple office visits to go over his medications to ensure that he is on all his medications The second case is a 72-year-old male with diabetes, hypertension, history of heart disease, stroke, stage 3 chronic kidney disease at risk of end stage renal disease requiring dialysis and major depressive disorder. He is on 14 daily medications which he must take to maintain his health. The patient also has limited health literacy and often gets his medications mixed or he misses the doses.
He has had recent hospital admissions for pneumonia, and his driving privileges have been declined. These patients cannot receive a call on Friday and say your new provider is on Monday, go see them. And that is what is going to happen if the injunction is lifted abruptly or there's a ruling in the favor of the administration or HHS. And this is why we wanted to make sure that we are taking the time to ensure that we are doing warm handoffs. We are talking about provider-to-provider communications. I'll let Dr. Preciado tell you the amount of work she and our physicians are putting into ensuring that Cases like these are not lost. Cases like these require at least three months, if not more to transition the care and we are obligated. These are our patients.
We are not saying we're going to abandon you and now you have a new provider. We are saying we're gonna stick with you until you go see your new provider. We're gonna make sure that you call your provider. We're gonna make sure that we talk to your provider. Our physicians will communicate with the new physician and ensure that all the information needed to manage these cases are happening This cannot happen when everybody else is struggling to put 30,000 patients reassigned and this cannot happen over a weekend. And this is why what people are saying we are jumping the gun or we are acting prematurely I take offense to the word prematurely. I think we are at the right time and it is our obligation it is our duty to ensure that we are still Coordinating the care and transitioning the care of our patients.
How are we doing that? CINCAL Health is the managed care plan, again big words for those who do not know a managed care plan means this is your insurance company so while some of us might have Blue Cross or Aetna or whatever The coverage would give you a network of providers. They tell you, your provider can be any of these 10 physicians. We're gonna assign you one.
If you don't like that, you can decide to choose somebody else but it has to be from that network. CINCAL has more than I think 70 providers across the county or something? I think it's in the letter we got. These are providers that accept CENCAL. These are called the network. These are going to see patients with CENCAL cards, with Medi-Cal coverage regardless what their immigration status is.
So when we hear things about people are gonna be left with no providers, people are gonna be left with no insurance, that is absolutely false. That is not information that is accurate We have been working with our health systems. We have been meeting on a weekly basis with Cottage, we are meeting with Lompoc Valley Medical Center and with Marion to inform them of what is happening.
However because these are health systems they are not as directly involved in primary care but they might have physicians that are affiliated and this is where CENCAL is working I can inform you and that is something that CENCAL has assured us, that as of today every patient of those 7500 patients have been matched with a provider. How is that happening? Simulation is done to match patients with providers that are willing and have open spots as well as geography in terms of matching patients with a provider.
And this is what has been, in the past three weeks, been done by CINCAL. And again, this is where now that these patients are going to be reassigned This is where the transition of care is going to happen, where our physicians and our clinicians are gonna start talking to those new providers and providing them with the needed information to care for those patients.
There are many steps involved in how SenCal is gonna manage that but there are also many things that need time that CENCAL demands. So for example, anytime there is a change in service the Department of Community Health Services need to be informed 60 days prior to that. Anytime the patient is reassigned, that patient is required to have 30 days notice Anytime we inform St. Kyle of something, then we need to also give him a 60-day. So again this cannot be done on a Friday to kick on Monday. We were pressed for time when there was no injunction. The injunction only bought us time but did not delay what we need to do. The injunction allowed us the luxury to say, we're not going to implement this October 1st but we are now, we have a little breathing room to get to that.
But what is going to happen with the injunction? Again, it's a gamble. Some people are gamblers, I am not. I'm not willing to risk based on uncertainty while we have the option and we have the alternative and we have the luxury to assign 7500 patients and match them with providers and ensure that they are receiving healthcare. In fact, we're hurting ourselves more by doing this because we're losing covered Insured patients, and this is the item that we bring you. Because of that we are losing revenue because of that We have a deficit this year of 5.2 million dollars Because we from January till the end of the fiscal year we are not going to be able to build for services for 7500 patients Because of that, we are going to have a deficit next year of $8.2 million because we are losing insured covered lives that we are no longer able to build for services and this is the item that we're bringing.
So what happens when we lose that revenue? We get into cost mitigation and we try to look for solutions that can offset that loss of revenue. And some of these solutions are hard, some are easier than others. So the first thing we did is we established a hiring pause. That means we are looking very carefully at any new hiring to control costs. We have now a criteria in place that will continue till next year, that we're only going to hire either essential positions or positions that are funded by grants or by other funding streams that are not coming neither from the general fund or from the revenue of the clinics. And that is going to continue for next year as well.
We have started looking at contractors and locum tenants. These are very expensive, and the only reason we do those because of the lack of our ability to find providers. So we are looking at some of those, and now that we have a lower volume of patients then these are some of the services that we are or some of the providers that we are looking to reduce Where possible, if we still need someone to see patients then we are not going to let go if we do not have a provider. Let me make that clear.
The hardest is the staffing reduction whatever cost mitigation scenarios we ran through including Adjusted scheduling, closing for two days. All that. Those all did not produce the loss of revenue and compensate for the loss of revenue that we're being hit with. So therefore there had to be a need to look at a reduction in staffing positions or eliminating positions We have, we are proposing 55.2 FTE positions of which 18.6 are vacant.
That elimination of these positions is going to help in bridging the gap for that loss of revenue but also it will, that decision has not been made arbitrarily to say one class of physicians is gonna go away or we're going to eliminate this class or versus that class. There has been also a readjustment of the ratio of staff, to providers, to patients based on the reduced volume that we have and we expect.
Lastly, we are looking and this is another misinformation, another rumor that is out there. We are assessing our specialty care services Let me elaborate a little bit more about what our specialty care services. We as a primary care FQHC are not required to provide any specialty services beyond primary care, however in the Santa Barbara Clinic We have been fortunate to provide services such as neurology, urology, surgery, orthopedics. These are services that again we are not required to provide and the frequency of those services vary between four hours on a Friday to a couple days a week So we are assessing each line of these services based on the volume, based on how if we decided to eliminate any of the specialty services. How are we again going to transition those patients?
Who is the specialist in the community that can see those patients? No decision has been done and no set date has been put in place to eliminate our specialty services. And if we do, it still has to require the 60 days advanced notice to SENCAL. It still requires the coordination of care and it still requires the transition plan that we are doing right now our biggest focus on our primary care the 7500 lives that we are dealing with and then we will revisit the specialty services as needed. However, some of those specialty services are easier to handle than others for example phlebotomy services these are the blood draws in the lab currently we have team members that would collect the blood or the urine sample spin it put it in a bag and it is sent to Quest Diagnostics The alternative would be patients would go to Quest Diagnostics or any other lab and their blood is drawn there and processed.
So this is not going to be as impactful as if we say no more endocrinology, for example. So these are what we are doing. And this is the logic we are using in assessing and evaluating specialty services as an extra cost mitigation measure that would help us address the deficit in this year but also carry us over to the next year. How would that impact our patient care?
Our primary care services is still going to be offered at all of our clinics as required. We are still going to have primary care, family planning, gynecology, immunizations, pharmacy and nutrition services, pediatrics, well child exams and everything that we are required to do according to the grant. Our clinics are going to remain open to everyone that we can. And let me say, we can emphasize on we can see or we're allowed to see. So while we are shifting some of the care to some of our patients there are still 75% of our population that need us and the choices might become whether we will throw everything away and not be able to serve anybody or take the option of still having our doors open to those 75% that are in the county, that are underserved, that are uninsured, that need our services just like anybody else.
How is that going to translate into our budget next year? Well we are expecting a loss of revenue of $8.2 million But we also, when we submitted our budget last year, we said we have a structural deficit that we are addressing in next year's budget and that is close to 7.6 million. So that is $15 million. So let's assume we do not do anything and let's assume it's an area where we tap into a fund reserve or magically you decide to assign us some general funds.
That is not going to address what we are going to encounter next year. And it might be, in all honesty, closing a clinic or two. So which option do we have? We are really looking at the worst of two options and this all has gone into the decision that is so hard to make but yet it was the lesser of two evils and this is what we want to do. There are also financial impacts that we're not still, not able to fathom such as the changes in the HR 1 or the state budget. Here's a scenario for example the impact on federal budget. We have seen the elimination of all grants that came during the COVID area from the Center for Disease Control And these affected our epidemiology, our laboratory grants, the immunization grants, several. The House Resolution HR1 would have changes to who's covered and who can be on Medicaid and who will not?
And what is the funding of Medicaid? We also experienced the loss of funding in the tone of $625,000 for our SNAP-Ed program. And those are real cuts that happened this year We also know that there are changes in the state budget so and the state regulations. So come January 1st, even those that are currently insured under the state as UIS will need to have there be a limit in the enrollment of those. There is also a change in the funding mechanism for I'm then we are going to also be at a deficit of $5.3 million. However, because of the HHS ban and because of the federal regulations then this is not a scenario we are addressing at this point.
So what is happening? We started care coordination plan with SENCAL. We have been meeting with SENCAL since day one on almost a daily basis, sometimes twice a day. We have been meeting with our health systems. We have been meeting with all our community health partners We have been looking at how do we ensure that we have a transition plan and a care coordination plan for our patients. This is an ongoing effort, and we are still continuing to do that regardless of what the decision is today.
We have established agreements for required services that we might not be able to provide as needed with other providers. Again, this is part of our obligation towards our grantor in terms of coordination of care and coordination of services. For our specialty services and for our contracted physicians, if any of those contracts require to come back to the board for board approval to terminate that contract then we will come back to you with that item.
And once everything is done and all patients are reassigned, and they're notified. And once we are moving ahead with all the warm handoff and the care coordination and a transition of care then that is when the final reassignment is going to take effect on January 1st. I'm not going to go through the recommended actions. However, let me reemphasize that what we are asking the board is to approve our rebudgeting because of a loss of revenue.
Thank you.
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Thank you Doctor. Supervisor Hartman do you have a question?
I guess I have several. I guess first of all this policy was originally included in H.R. 1, the so-called big beautiful bill. The parliamentarian kicked it out so then it was incorporated into a decree from Thank you, Mr. Chairman. undocumented people of needed health care and that hurts everybody because public health, everybody's health depends on each other.
So, to get to a question. In our county because I serve on the CENCAL board with you Dr. Hamami, I know that we have 175,000 people in Santa Barbara County that get Medi-Cal. Almost 30,000 are of this unsatisfactory immigration status so only 7500 are treated by us But if we don't, what I think I heard you say is if we have very complex cases and if we don't get ahead of this, if we're in a last minute struggle with 30,000 patients trying to find providers, we're hurting the people we want to serve. So we're trying to get ahead of the curve to help people and get them settled in the most smooth transition possible Is that correct?
Absolutely.
Okay, and then I guess what I'm trying to get at are what are additional risks of delay and failure to act? What would happen for example to other county health programs if the hammer comes down do we risk losing funding for other programs that serve other vulnerable people And I guess this may be a question for County Council or someone in terms of our budget.
Do we risk penalties? Do we risk clawback? I mean, I want to be prudent. I want to do the best I can in a terrible situation and I want to understand the risks of not acting
Supervisor Hartman and members of the board so there is a lot going on at the federal level. So I know we've been talking about this existing litigation and that is ongoing, there is an injunction in place. The current briefing schedule has that ending for motions for summary judgment in January. So it's a fairly quick moving case but there has been a request for stay in light of the government shutdown.
How that was changed at the end of the process. And so what we've seen are some other things that are starting to happen for instance when we get a federal grant, the county is required to do an assurance or verification and it used to be a little bit more general statement like we're in compliance with all federal laws and regulations but the assurance agreements that were seeing more recently are much broader and are requiring compliance with all the new executive orders that are coming out.
And so that is the potential impact as far as other federal grants and funding that we're seeing A few other things that are going on, it might be helpful to be aware of. The U.S. Attorney General sent a letter regarding sanctuary jurisdictions and has stated that there are efforts to enforce. The Department of Justice has also announced a new civil enforcement affirmative litigation branch That will represent the United States filing lawsuits against states, municipalities and private entities that interfere with or obstruct federal policies.
There are other federal departments that are also issuing notices that are not in this litigation. Some of which have had other litigations, some are not being litigated and they are doing reinterpretations so that's a very broad overview but there is a lot going on I mean it's something that we are monitoring on a daily and weekly basis to see how it could impact our programs
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Was there anything else you wanted to add to that?
I mean the risk is there. We cannot predict what can happen. Unfortunately, we wake up on a Monday and there's something new happening that affects the way we operate whether it's a new vaccine schedule or whether it's something like that so the risk of we as federally qualified health centers might be as much as maybe losing the designation of the federally qualified health center There is nothing that I would love to see then for this case to prevail and the injunctions lifted and the ability to serve everybody as we used to be, and as we used to do.
However, is that a risk that I can comfortably take? No. And that's why I am not, and we are not willing to risk all five clinics and a whole operation while we have an alternative that we can do.
Thank you.
Thank you, Supervisor Lavenino.
Thank you Madam Chair. Well I think first off instead of everybody beating up on you, I think you've done an excellent job because all I heard was about the duty to the patient You know, we have been serving folks regardless of immigration status at all of our five clinics. We don't ask the question and nothing would have changed in that except for this administration.
Okay? So I want that clear and we also saw what happens like in the AmeriCorps situation People got an email at four o'clock in the morning and said, you don't have a job anymore.
Or
Planned Parenthood. Correct. So these things can turn on a dime. And what happened in the AmeriCorps situation was people decided they were gonna work for free anyway and continue to do the job. I don't expect people in public health to work for free so I appreciate the fact that you're trying to get out ahead of this. Some of the questions I have are okay, so we have 7500 that we need to reassign and find other coverage for?
Are there 7500 slots available in this county for folks to be able to, are you confident that with a warm handoff each person will be able to get the service that they
need? Short answer is yes but let me elaborate a little bit more on that. We do not reassign anybody. We cannot assign anybody even if we wanted to. These are assigned by their managed care plan This was the first place we went to when we started looking into this. Our partner, the managed care plan, San Carlos unfortunately cannot be here I think they're in DC but every indication including a communication that we got yesterday assured us that all these patients have been matched What does that mean? That means if I have in my network 25 providers, I'm going to go and say how many of you are willing to take new patients.
How many of you are willing to take new patients that take our insurance and then put that into an algorithm then add that database and say a patient in Santa Maria has this Options in Santa Maria. We cannot assign somebody in Santa Barbara to someone in Santa Maria, so now we're playing the matching of geography need and availability. So that is the first iteration that again SenCal has told us that they currently have everybody matched.
What does that mean? Once that communication has been done with both the provider and the patient, this is where our plan of transition is going to kick in. In addition, when we reached out to many of our health care systems such as Marion and Cottage and even Lompoc they said in that transition phase our urgent cares have the capacity to also absorb anyone that needs immediate care.
The last thing that I also want to add is that let's say January 1st comes And there are 10, 20, 50 hopefully not more than 50 patients that still have not seen their provider the new assigned provider. It is our obligation to still continue to provide care regardless and we will continue to provide care regardless So it is not as simple as, again I am so touched by all the passion and the concern that is out there but it's not as simple as oh just wait until the ruling and then tell them oh sorry we can't see you.
It doesn't happen
So that takes me to, can we put slide, I think it's slide 13 up there. Had a question because it's talking about the State Budget Act and if I read that right so... That's where we'd all rather be right now, right? So anyway, so it sounds like So this is kind of what's weird to me, is that the federal government is telling us you can no longer serve people with unsatisfactory immigration status. Okay but CHC or Marion or Dignity or whoever, that's still Medi-Cal correctly? Correct?
Okay so eventually I mean the state's paying for it But so what happens after January 2026 when the feds tell the state we're not reimbursing you anymore and nobody's getting seen anywhere.
I think that's a possibility
okay, so that's that's what I'm really concerned about so then Because right now what I was thinking is okay, is there any scenario in which we have CHC or whoever be an umbrella for us? We keep the clinic open and they build it's our pay. You know kind of I don't know if we've looked at a situation like that.
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I'm not sure I understand
well. I mean if CHC can see the patients and we can't. I don' want to lose trying to figure out how
Well, the reassignment is
basically that. That's the
reassignment portion. The reassignment is that we are saying doctor so-and-so, center so-and-so clinic so- and-so are you able to see this patient? Once that care is transitioned and that reassignment then they become their patient. That is their new medical home
Okay. So honestly, and it's not just for public health but this is the, it's not even our first time that we've had the administration now I mean the AmeriCorps situation and now we're moving into this one. This isn't the last time we're gonna see this either so we're gonna need as a county to come up with a strategy overarching strategy of, and I don't know if our budget director can weigh in on how much federal funding this county receives overall Paul, you want to give us just kind of a ballpark?
Supervisor through the chair. It's it's I could say it's over 200 million dollars. That's about 14 that's 14 percent of our total operating revenues coming from federal sources. It is probably more than
that. That's conservative. Thank you. So just going into this thing wide eyes wide open is that eventually And I think we're seeing this already in the CEO's office being asked to sign contracts. I mean, contracts that we're getting now are coming with a boilerplate of you must agree to all these other items and eventually it's gonna get to the point where if you're not in lock stock marching along the same way, the thing they have is the power of the budget and to turn off the funding when that happens for us The money comes from Washington D.C., it goes out to our constituents.
When that stops coming in, sure we might be able to handle the public health crisis or we might be able to handle the social services but eventually it's gonna be all of our services and at some point we're gonna have to figure out what that strategy looks like because I can see in the not too distant future a situation where we either have to You know pledge to all these things that we don't want to do or we're going to be losing a significant portion of our funding which means for us unfortunately jobs.
So I hate the way this looks you started off by saying that this is out of our control it's so hard for people to hear that because this America and we feel like hey, this isn't out of our control. We can do something about this the problem for us at this level is doing something about this means Not accepting federal funding, which is 15 to 20% of our funding. Which we're a service organization which at the end of the day us making those kind of decisions just ends up hurting the people out on the street that are receiving our services.
So we're kind of in this quandary I hate being in this position and it would be nice if cooler heads prevailed but I don't see that happening anytime soon so
Can I just ask a quick follow up on the federal funding? Can you just describe some of the programs that it goes towards.
Supervisor Chair Caps, I believe the bulk of the direct revenue we get in comes into the Social Services Department as a federal line items in our accounting. And then there's a lot of pass through as well that comes via state sources. That's a lot of the charges for services for Medi-Cal that public health and behavioral wellness receive. There's probably a lot of other grants and things, HCD, you know CDBG funding comes to mind. And then a lot of departments probably have various grants and things that come from federal government, DA, Sheriff, probably many others
But the point is it's a lot of, a lot of things that people care about and rely on. Yeah
okay. Chair Caps could I follow up with a quick? Yes Supervisor Hartman. This is just a quick clarification in terms of federally qualified health centers which the county is we're subject to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that's the source of this rule that were is being litigated, but it exempts that exempts nonprofit FQHCs. Is that correct? And they're not subject to quite the same risk that we are if we provide public benefit to those with unsatisfactory immigration status.
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Supervisor Hartman and members of the board, that's correct. The language is that a nonprofit organization in providing any federal public benefit is not required under this chapter to determine verify or otherwise require proof of eligibility of any applicant for the benefits so it's just different circumstance Supervisor Nielsen. And excuse me, I should mention that this is also part of the litigation.
This section is part of the litigation as well as the other provisions.
Supervisor
Nielsen. Thank you Chair Kaps. I've just got a kind of good question. I'm trying to wrap my brain around some of this. So California is in the position it is in part because we agreed to provide enhanced services beyond what Medicaid typically would provide, is that in part of why we are providing additional services at these clinics?
I'm not sure whether we're providing additional services rather than California as far as I know is one of the very few states if not the only states that provide health coverage to individuals with unsatisfactory immigration status. So for example, I was in Michigan Lived in Michigan, worked in Michigan. Michigan does not have that problem because they do not provide insurance. So the practice used to be that we don't ask anybody and because we welcome anybody whether they have insurance or no insurance, that wasn't an issue. With this new change then now even if they have insurance It is the immigration status that is dictating who you can serve.
So in Michigan, they provided services without health insurance or they didn't check? Can you help me?
FQHCs are supposed to serve everybody that walk through the door. In fact, they were designed to provide services to the uninsured.
Right and under the current Medicaid policies emergency services Labor and delivery, those are still covered or can you?
Yes. There are exemptions of emergency care, emergency services as well as infectious diseases so for example we will still be able to see patients at our HIV STD TB programs even at our clinics.
So it's the enhanced services that we can argue about whether that are essential or not, but it's the hand services that we're kind of talking about that California decided that they were going to cover an insurance. That is that's now changed right? And then when it comes to the matching so we know where these each one of these patients would potentially go at this point
Yes, St. Cal knows for sure and the patients will know and we will be informed as well so we can plan this care. I think it is very important also to emphasize that the new providers as well as the patients when they receive their notification it's not going to mention like if I am a new provider I'm not gonna get a letter that says we're sending you an undocumented That information is not going to be revealed. That information is not going to be shared with anybody and again patients get reassigned every day whether it's for convenience, whether it's for a request that they needed or whether a clinic is at capacity and say we're sorry we cannot take more patients.
And that
is the process that CENCAL is
using. Okay that's what I'm concerned about because you know I know we have some of our health systems are already impacted, you know that already have issues prior to this decision and these reassignments. You know, I know the community belong, you know Lompoc Valley, you know it's right now by eight month waiting list to get to see a primary care physician.
We yes, we met with the leadership at Lompoc Valley yesterday. CINCAL leadership was with us also via zoom and they were informed Phyllis, how many providers? Five or six providers in Lompoc that were accepting patients. So again they have the ability to know who of their providers are at capacity and who isn't and this is the information that they now are sharing.
I appreciate the concern about health systems and again one of the reasons we're doing this is because If we are not providing care coordination, then all those patients that have complex issues are going to end up at the emergency room. And I think this is the biggest concern of the major health systems. It's not the providers as much as the health systems.
I don't know if you wanted to add something?
Supervisor Nelson, through the chair. I just wanted to add that I did receive a briefing from SENCAL and they have 50 in their network They have 55 primary care providers locations And of those 55 22 of them have agreed to accept transitioning members and though the 7500 of our members as well as an additional thousand from Another FQHC have been all matched with new providers, including the criteria that was mentioned earlier of how close the provider is to their home. If there's a family and they're siblings they ensure that the location can take all of the siblings. They don't split up siblings from providers so They will be spread across 22 different locations based on their particular aspects that go into the matching process.
All right. The high-risk patients, do we have the 7500 patients? Do we have kind of a number what the high risk number is? About 15.
Let our supervisors know how we are approaching this, our stratification, our risk evaluation and who we're moving first and who.
Please. So September 4th, we started looking at about 7500 patients and we had a group two RN supervisors, a data analyst, a performance improvement coordinator, myself, Lindsay Pella. We sat and discussed it internally and with Sancal how we were going to look at these patients and stratify them based on indicators that we received from CENCAL. These indicators group the patients into categories of chronicity of disease, the kinds of health issues that can get them in trouble. We took that group and we started looking at where they fell in terms Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Barbara County Board of Supervisors.
The group of patients that we're talking about really truly have high risk illnesses, that we cannot let go of these patients. We have to make a reasonable effort to make sure that these patients move from one provider to the next provider and we cannot close the loop until that has happened and we can document that the patient has been seen. That's that's a small subset, you know we have the highest category priority medium and low.
The highest are it is really the smallest subset but there are in the hundreds in our in our larger health care centers so we really need time. All
right and then the next question I had and it's probably why we have some people in the audience today it's about staff And what happens if these do all go into place? Many of the people that work for the county and these, that are gonna be potentially laid off have a skill set that is still needed in our health systems. How are we going about the discussions even with some of our partners about maybe having some of these people that are currently working for us, because if maybe our demand goes down.
Maybe transitioning and working for some other health care system partners? Is that a discussion that we're engaging with at some point because it seems like that might be something that would also not only serve our clients and our constituents but also you know our employees.
Absolutely, sir. I don't want to speak on behalf of HR but also we have been meeting regularly with HR to look at what happens once because you know we're talking about positions not about people and there will be some bumping and bridging The things that are going to trigger that. But the final outcome, I know and Christy can weigh more into that. I know there are tools, there are things that the county has in place to ensure that they're also cared for and there is a transition. I am not disclosing any, probably secret that also when we met with our health systems they said well we're in a shortage of health professionals and we'd be more than happy to facilitate that but it is something that definitely HR can work with.
Thank you Christy
Thank you Chair Caps, Supervisor Nelson and the board. We will be working with the department on looking at each person who is individually displaced under the action and working to try to find them placement within our organization where they meet the qualifications for vacant positions and other positions in our organization And then also working with them around the resources available to them, other employer opportunities that might be out there.
We have a whole subcommittee that is working to try and develop resources for affected employees and to support them whether that is layoff or also transitioning to new employers and new jobs within the county. And as Director Hamami said they've already had Some discussions with other health care providers about potentially assuming some of the employees that would be affected by this.
So there would be an opportunity that you know again many of the people here today are concerned about layoffs to be absorbed potentially somewhere else in the organization or the health systems?
Certainly they have a right to be counseled and considered for any position that they meet the minimum qualifications for. That is a funded vacant position, so we will be working. We have recruiters who will be meeting with each person individually who's displaced to talk about their options.
And I don't want to jump you with this number, but maybe to the kind of range. We have quite a few funded unfilled positions in the county. Would you just give us a range of what that looks like? Because right now we're talking about 36.6 positions. So 37 people. What do we have out there that's funded but unfilled?
Funded but unfilled, we have a lot discounting the public health and the social services department. We're in the 240 range of vacant positions now some of those have been identified for we've got another round of budget difficulty coming so some of those are the departments are holding vacant with the idea that they'll be eventually eliminated But we do have a number of positions that we can consider folks for. We have I think 40 open recruitments right now and some of those are for multiple positions within the same classification And so we do have some positions that we absolutely can consider displaced people for.
Well thank you I wanted to strike the balance here of not despair but not also complete optimism, but that it's it's to be determined for many of our county employees that are concerned about potential layoffs that there is a process there is something in place I know and you know I wasn't here the last round maybe I think Supervisor Labanino was but I know that we had, I don't know if we actually laid anybody off even though we had identified quite a few and so I think that's an important message out there.
And I know a lot of people are concerned because their names on the list you know but Unfortunately, you have a public job and there's a transparent process. And we'd much rather do this out and be upfront about it than for you to find out later that your job was being talked about. And so that's one of the reasons why it happens. It's painful. I understand that.
You know, I was a teacher in my initial career and I was pink slipped every semester for my first three years. And I know what that did to me and my family. So I just want to tell our employees out there that are here today that are concerned that we're aware, we're taking in mind this is not a flippant discussion either this item or the next item as we progress through this. So again want to just make sure that those of you that are going to potentially comment that we do hear and we do see you
Supervisor Nielsen I should also add that they all, we do have several very effective employee organizations, employee unions and they are, we're in active discussion with them and they are looking out for the rights of their employees as well. And helping us, we will continue those discussions to talk about ways to impact, mitigate the impacts on any affected employees
1:36 – 1:4713 turns
I appreciate those questions. Supervisor Lee?
There's a question, so if we do continue this can we get a Senkel rep in the next meeting to be here asking questions that we may have for them? Sure and just confirm there's no reps from Senkel here today right?
No
okay that's my question thank you.
I think both Miss Owen the CEO and her COO Are both in DC and I was hoping that they can join us on zoom, but they probably are in meetings
Yeah, but to your question I did speak with the president of SenCal on Friday and she did confirm what Dr. Mami said of the 7500 patients they have done a simulation and every single one has been matched with a provider. And so I know that question has been asked repeatedly but it's just very crucial to be conveyed. I know there's a lot of mistrust out there that won't actually happen And I appreciate that that mistrust is based in compassion for those patients, but I do know that that intention is very crystal clear. That those matches have been already made.
So thank you for already clarifying that my question that question has been already answered so I have two questions remaining thanks to my colleagues for asking good ones first is a lot of been made it that we are the first county to do this can you explain please why were Unique or why you see, you know because people don't understand. You know every county is of a different size Some have clinics some have hospitals unless you're in it. You don't really understand the different Makeup so if could you please understand explain it?
Yes, I was at the CHEAC meeting last week. CHEAC is the California Health Executive Association and this is where all health directors from all 53 or 54 counties in California come together on an annual basis. And I asked a lot so there are so many differences amongst counties for example there are counties that do not have FQHCs So they don't have an issue with that. So they don't have clinics? They don't have clinics There are some that they do, but they don't run them directly. So they're also shielded so they give them to some nonprofits. Those that still have are as concerned as we are. But some of why they are not doing this is because they don't have the capacity outside for their patients. So they do not have the comfort level that we have here that we have providers that can take them.
But if they do not have providers, then they are at two choices. Not seeing them period and abandoning them or overburdening their providers which they are not willing to see. So these are some of the differences. Not one county is similar and we cannot say everybody's going to do this and all that. Then there are some other counties which I learned that they individually joined the lawsuit and litigation and for their clinics to comply while they're suing as a Contradiction and that has been more a, I guess political decision that has been made.
And so if a county like LA that has hospitals can again, I think it would be helpful we always try to have benchmarks if you can just-
So hospitals are different than federally qualified centers because hospitals might not get federal grants, might not get federal funding. I think what we need to emphasize A federally qualified health center is established by a federal grant. This is how we got our first clinic, by a federal grant that we still receive. That federal designation allows us to be compensated at a rate that would allow us to see the uninsured. So all that is at risk. Losing the initial grant, losing the designation means no clinic Unless the county is willing to operate it just similar to any private practice that is out
there. Okay, thank you for answering that and my second question really has to do with the timing which speaks to my comment about Feeling rushed. County Council, could you please speak to the injunction? The comment was made that perhaps the injunction can be lifted tomorrow. The case is longer than that. I know we don't have a certain date but it isn't tomorrow.
Correct?
Chair Cavs, members of the board. No it's not tomorrow but it is well as I said before it's a quick moving case and the briefing schedule was set to be completed early January there is a motion for a stay but I don't believe that hasn't been granted yet right so so it's just not clear what the timing is but I will say it's fairly quick moving on the original briefing schedule
Okay, and I know these things are hard to predict. And I appreciate that you were making that metaphorically Dr. Mami. And I just think again so much information has been shared here today publicly and I think it's been very helpful. I see no lights on so that means it's time to move to public comment but we do need to take a break for our interpretation services. So we will take a 10-minute break and come back just before 11. Thanks everybody Okay we are back from a quick break.
And now we will turn it over to the public for public comment on this item, departmental item number one. Oh but County Council has an announcement first. Thank you
Madam Chair members of the board I just wanted to go back to one of the questions that was asked earlier about what could happen for failure to comply so i mentioned the federal grants and the certifications And so what happens if there's a finding of noncompliance for the county? There's a series of things that can happen, including federal dollars being withheld, disallowing costs in the future, suspending federal awards.
and withholding further federal funds on any project or program, and they can also go after out the remedies. So I wanted to mention that. And then also part of the reason that I went through all of the different things that are going on is I just want to make sure the message is coming across that this compliance with the federal rules and the new things that are coming out as set as a priority.
And so if one Approach is not working, for instance HR 1 not passing. We're seeing it implemented through another approach such as the federal grants so if one team doesn't work there's another tactic so I just wanted to make sure that that was clear
1:47 – 1:5316 turns
Thank you.
Quick question.
Supervisor Nielsen?
Yeah, thank you Chair Kaps and I think we have a little bit of history that unfortunately recent history in the county with some of these issues is not only we might lose funding but also if we pursue it we're liable for additional damages potentially and I know like triple damage. You know I know we've had triple damages in the past when we've had some of these false claims litigation. Is that something that we'd be potentially opening ourselves up to?
Supervisor Nielsen, I think what you're asking is I mean it's I guess further compliance so like if we're found out of compliance then one impact of that can be like a finding that we're using federal funds for something we're not supposed to and in that case it can be recovered and there can be potential for additional damages as
well. So it's not just losing the money that we got from the federal government but it could be some additional damages to the county?
Correct. So it could be not only the funding you're receiving, but there could be penalties and damages. It also could affect the county's ability to get other funds, other federal funds.
Okay thank you.
Thanks for that clarification so with that I'm going to close public comment on this departmental item and turn it over to the clerk. I know we have many requests to speak a lot of interest and compassion and care about this topic
Yes, Chair Kapsa and members of the board we have 56 requests to speak on this item. And as we announced earlier the chair has indicated that she will be giving priority to speakers who wish to speak for one minute all other speakers will have a maximum of one and a half minutes to speak and We are going to begin here in Santa Barbara if you would like to speak for one minute If you can please begin lining up at the podium In a nice orderly fashion, thank you. And then we will go to Santa Maria. I had a few members of the public indicate they want to speak for one minute. If you would like to speak for one minute please indicate that to Yesenia in Santa Maria and then we will go to Zoom. For anyone who wants to speak for one minute please use the raise hand feature on Zoom if you want to speak for 1 minute otherwise you will have 1 minute and 30 seconds.
Right and for all those Coming to the podium, if you can please clearly state your first and last name for the record so that we can mark you off. And I also want to include that you can only speak if you've signed up in a speaker slip. So if you've not signed up for a speaker slip, the chair has indicated that she's closed public comment period. So only those that have signed up with a speaker slip.
And thanks to all our speed speakers here. Just a reminder, we respect the rules here of not taking up time with clapping and booing and all of that but we can just be respectful that way and move along as quickly as possible and still enjoy our democracy and get our comments and our thoughts across. Thank you.
Ready, please proceed. Good morning everybody and my name is Edith. I'm an immigrant like many of you. I was disappointed to learn about the transition of care of taxpaying undocumented residents through the paper although this proposal is framed as caring action is anything but there's a betrayal of trust I'm hearing that this conversation has been happening for a while now, yet we're just hearing about this. I've talked to our neighbors many of whom are still undocumented and the question that comes up is why weren't we informed ahead of time? Why did we find out through the paper and is the county still safe for us?
This is a premature plan with more questions than answers. Let us lead our strategy not with fear We support CAPS's effort to delay and work with community partners while also studying the litigation. If this proposal proceeds as written, Santa Barbara County will be the first counties in the state to kick out undocumented patients from their clinics. One of the first, let us be clear if we're gonna lead on anything it should not be on denying healthcare access to all vulnerable communities.
Thank you
that is your time. To do so would set a shameful and dangerous precedent thank you.
And sorry, my apologies. Can you please state your first and last name for the record again? Thank you so much.
Members of the board, my name is AJ Hoven and I'm with the California Immigrant Policy Center. We're a statewide policy org that works to advance equity and immigrant rights throughout the state of California. We're here to express a desire and support for Chairman Caps's proposal to delay this item here and also to ensure that we'd be able to provide more community input through stakeholder support The truth of the matter is across the state of California undocumented immigrants and immigrants at large, of which I am one are increasingly under attack. And we're your neighbors where the people that coach your softball teams.
We work in your grocery stores. We're also members of SEIU here as well. people providing the care that you are potentially going to be moving folks away from. We would just like an opportunity to sit with you, to work with you and CIPC would welcome the opportunity if asked. Thank you.
1:53 – 1:599 turns
My name is Gloria Soto Good morning, members of the board. I'm here today representing future leaders of America in strong opposition to the proposed rebalancing plan that's before you today. I understand that staff have said to you that this isn't about ending care for certain patients but more so about complying with the anticipated federal changes. However regardless of how it's framed The real world consequences is that thousands of patients will be cut off from the county's health care systems.
You said that their coverage as an ending, that it's just access to county services but what does this mean for the chronically ill patient patients who have built trust with county doctors? As someone who deals with chronic illnesses I know just how challenging it is to navigate the healthcare system and right now is not the time to stand Alongside these unfair policies that the Trump administration is putting before us. Thank you.
Good morning. My name is Primitiva Hernandez, Executive Director with 805 UndocuFund and this is a sign that was made last night by medical staff and their children. She said she was going to be listening in so as you can see this decision is impacting many people in our community and to us the immigrant community we say where is our voice? When were we going to be consulted to make sure that we got to provide feedback on how this is going to impact our community? We have more questions than answers now because of this additional information. And we feel that we deserve an opportunity to provide a presentation as well, to bring in our consultants, to bring in our attorneys and other community voices So that this decision can be a collective decision and a decision that the community can stand behind so that we don't have what we have here right now.
Thank you
Hello, my name is Anna Garcia and I wanted to say what is fascism? It's centralized power under a dictator. It's a capitalist system controlled by state to serve the regime's grift. It's violence against opposition fueled by nationalism and racism. It reaches public services always. Do not obey in advance rule number one of resisting fascism. We've been working on this in the background and the community doesn't know about it. Thanks for sharing that Hartman We, the people are not confused. We demand transparency and real representation. We're tired of governments that serve the wealthy and disregard the rest of us. Your flowery language doesn't hide the lack of humanity. So also just curious what's going on with that audit for the sheriff?
It seems like that's some money that could be redirected to actual community care. And as my sign says your term is up when we say so do the right thing.
Hello everybody, my name is Chelsea Lancaster. I'm a community activist and I am the daughter of a Mexican immigrant Rule number one do not obey in advance and do not negotiate with terrorists Somehow the people all of these people who have all these wonderful progressive ideals that live in our brains don't understand what real solidarity looks like in the context of a fascist government I think I saw $8 million up there would be the shortfall.
Again, why don't you ask all of Sheriff Brown's broke best friends to come and stop asking for an additional $4 million in overtime quarterly every time they come here? The Sheriff's Department has morally and fiscally bankrupted our county. So maybe you can look there because it looks like it's going to be easier to get medical care in the jail than it will be in our community health facilities. This is not a transaction, this is a relationship. People don't get to choose when we already have all this medical racism in our system that you're just gonna go and see somebody else.
Thank you that is your time
Hello, my name is Ana. I'm a cost policy advocate and I'm here because what Santa Barbara County is doing is not just wrong it's unjust. Cutting $8 million from public health, laying off 55 frontline workers, 121 from social services before federal cuts even begin That means longer lines, fewer resources and more suffering especially for folks experiencing poverty, the undocumented and working families. Also forcing 7500 most immigrant patients out of their care while a federal injunction is still in place is a violation of trust and basic human dignity. We are already number two in poverty in California. One in five children here are currently experiencing homelessness. These cuts will deepen that crisis. We're not just balancing a budget, we are deciding here now today who gets to be healthy, who gets to be heard and who gets to be housed.
This is a racial, economic and immigrant injustice. We demand transparency, a hold to patients transfers and that surplus funds be used to prevent these layoffs.
Thank you Ana, that is your time. And Ana can you please state your last name for the record?
Yeah R-C-A-R-C.
Perfect thank you.
1:59 – 2:045 turns
Chair members of the board my name is Jacqueline Carlson I'm also speaking on behalf of Gail Teton Landis. I'm here today on a very sad day where we decide to put budget as a blind item on an agenda rather than human rights and human dignity. Today, our action item is about budget. It's not about creating a system but rather transferring people into other care providers that will eventually have to cut off benefits anyway.
So what are we actually doing? We're moving the guilt to agencies that are nonprofits, that by the way because they're FQHSs are actually a part of the litigation and are standing strong with our community. So what happens when those people go off out of your hands to community providers that then have to cut benefits anyway? Have we thought about that? Have we diligently created that plan? Because here, we're talking about budget. And here, we're talking about finding positions for staff members in those community agencies that are picking up the slack temporarily.
Imagine what you do. Imagine that now you're the first county to do something that differs people onto another chopping block. Thank you, Jacqueline. That is your time.
Hello, my name is Anthony Catalano. I'm an emergency physician in this county. This mandate is antithetical to everything I believe as a physician and I'm here taking care of this community at 2 o'clock in the morning When people have a fever, their parents are sick. And I know this is so difficult and goes against every fiber of your moral being as our elected officials to try to balance this but that's the job we have is trying to make difficult decisions when there's no right answer. I think the most difficult decision you guys are gonna have to make today is whether or not to stay this motion for another month because all of these people deserve a voice in what's happening right now But time is also important and it is really hard to move this ship.
And if you wait another month, you're also making it a lot more difficult for our providers to help these patients in the future. It is hard to get these people placed. It is hard to get these really sick people into primary care. I don't know what the right answer is. That's your job and I'm really sorry. I don't envy you that position but just know that staying this is not a benign decision. These people need to be heard but waiting is also a challenge so Good luck and thank you for hearing us all.
Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Andrew Hawkins. I'm an administrative office professional at Behavioral Wellness in an outpatient program and I'm here not only in solidarity with my fellow workers at County Health and Social Services but also to express the concern that any changes to county health which behavior wealth clients disproportionately rely on is going to roll back to our already overburdened and understaffed team.
I urge you to withdraw this motion.
Good morning, Chair and members of the board. My name is Christy Glisson I've worked for Santa Barbara County for 29 years in systems and technology with the Sheriff's Department I'm a proud member of Local 620 at CIU. I'm not in one of the departments facing layoffs, I'm here today because I care deeply about my co-workers and the community that we serve. I want to sincerely thank you for the work that you do.
Balancing fiscal responsibility with community needs takes wisdom courage and heart. I deeply respect and care I deeply respect the care you bring to every decision. The proposal to eliminate positions in social services and public health is more than a budget adjustment, it affects real people. Employees who dedicate their lives to serving others and residents who depend upon them when they have nowhere else to turn.
I know you want what's best for the county. A community that strong compassionate prepared preserving these positions honors that vision It's not only the kind choice, it's the wise one. Thank you for your time, your service and your continued commitment to the people who depend on you most. Thank you.
Hello everybody. My name is Teresa Alvarez, Executive Director of the Carpinteria Children's Project and Board Member of Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics. To say that the news about transitioning 7500 undocumented patients out of county care was disappointing is an understatement. I appreciate the information shared today but so many questions remain. As a nonprofit that supports the community with Medi-Cal and CalFresh enrollment we are concerned about what the warm handoff looks like and what care for these families will look like in the future.
Will patients receive a call, a letter? Will it be in terms that they understand what will happen if and when other clinics that are willing to accept UIS patients lose funding. This is a public health risk I support the decision to delay the vote today we urge you to work more closely with community partners not just healthcare but those working with those who are directly affected thank you
2:04 – 2:106 turns
My name is Mary Ellen Recy, I'm here on my own time speaking as a private citizen. I don't represent my employer. The patients who will lose care don't look like me and they don't feel safe being here. I have the privilege to feel safe. They do not. Please don't close one of the few doors in our county where they are safe, where they do show up, where they are heard.
Matching is one thing, being seen as another. I serve on the board of CCHI California Coverage and Health Initiatives, a statewide network of 600 partner groups helping children and families navigate care. No other California county has chosen this path. The lawsuit is still pending, enforcement is paused. We are acting before legally required while the fight for justice continues. Public health needs to work with immigrant-led organizations, promotoras and the agencies in this room to ensure multilingual community based messaging so families don't disengage out of fear or confusion.
I'm not here as an executive director today so I didn't dress like one. I'm wearing a different hat, one from my hometown in Detroit. I've lived and worked in this county for over 20 years but I'm immigrant too just from another country, not from another country but from North City Detroit. Take a page from my team the Detroit Lions keep on playing through the whistle don't stop don't give up.
Good morning my name is Alan Cronin I'm a registered nurse with the Cayo Real Clinic in Santa Barbara. On September 15th, I celebrated a very important anniversary. It was the 40th anniversary of me receiving my nursing license. I've greatly enjoyed the challenges of my profession. I recall remarking to several people shortly after I had been hired saying that I believe I landed where I belong.
Some two years later, I still feel that way I enjoy taking care of people and have a special fondness for vulnerable populations such as those we serve. Many of my clients work part or full-time and are living happier and more productive lives with support services that we in the county proudly provide, and I'm here to share, as many have, the perspective of someone who sees people who are not numbers, who has a relationship with them, and is a person who's not simply a vendor of services but one human being like those I serve.
I want to share a quote with you by the German author Goethe, that's G-O-E-T-H-E for the record. You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. If you know of the minimum staffing standards for nursing that were established in California then you likely know that subsequent research revealed what is intuitively obvious, that deaths and medical errors were reduced It is similarly intuitively obvious that reducing staffing numbers will have a negative impact directly on our clients.
That is unconscionable to me and I'm asking you to take a serious look at the impact of the proposed cuts. Please let us maintain the highest quality of service to our wonderful but ultimately vulnerable clients by taking another look at those proposed cuts, and let me share with you a brief...
That is your time thank you.
Thank you
Good morning, Chair and members of the Board. My name is Sandra Polichetti. I am a proud member of the Local 60. I have been a nurse for 40 years and I've been with the county 10 years at Santa Barbara Health Care Center. I'm here today not just as an employee but as someone who deeply cares about what's happening in this county. The Santa Barbara County Health Care Centers are the subordinate for the underserved in our communities. We are the ones who educate, treat and support those who have nowhere else to go.
My colleagues and I are not just staff we are lifelines When you approve layoffs, you're not just cutting positions. You're cutting access. You're cutting care and for many, you are cutting their last chance at survival. I have seen firsthand what happens when services are reduced. People fall through the cracks. Their health deteriorates and some die alone on the streets in emergency rooms. They're going to be very overcrowded. These tragedies can be prevented. Please, I urge you to stop those layoffs.
Good morning Chair and members of the Board. My name is Alicia Marin, I'm speaking as a proud SEIU Local 620 member. I worked at the county for 10 years helping care for our community in the public health clinic right now. There's so much uncertainty and these proposed layoffs are deeply personal. They won't just affect my family they'll affect the patients who trust us with their health and well-being We've built strong bonds with the people we serve. They come to us because they know we care.
Losing staff means losing that trust and forcing families to navigate unfamiliar systems with fewer resources. Like many others, I have bills to pay, groceries to buy and family to support. With the cost of living raising layoffs would be devastating. I'm here to say no layoffs protect our jobs, protect our patients and protect the heart of this community. Thank you.
2:10 – 2:1616 turns
Thank you everyone for being so polite today. I really appreciate it if just a friendly reminder to please clearly and loudly state your first and last name that would be very helpful for us thank
you Good morning, Chairs and Supervisors. Vanessa Teran, Director of Policy with MICOP. I'm here today to respectfully urge you to halt the county's proposal to restrict health care access based on immigration status. The upcoming medical enrollment freeze for undocumented adults over 19 set to begin in 2026 would undo a decade of progress. In response we're working urgently to enroll as many vulnerable community members as possible particularly farm workers as they remain uninsured at highest rates Supervisor Hartman, we would like to clarify that MICOP has not had any advance notice through its partnership with SENCAL of the proposed transition. We are not notified instead we learned of this through the independent as everybody else did.
This lack of transparency and engagement has serious consequences not only for those directly affected but the entire health care system Major changes like this require meaningful stakeholder input. I urge you not to move forward with a policy that would harm immigrant communities, workers especially when the federal guidance is not yet finalized. Thank you
Good morning, Supervisors. My name is Kelly Beacham and I have proudly served Santa Barbara County for 24 years. I'm a certified phlebotomist in the Public Health Department and I work at the Lompoc Clinic. I come before you as someone who has spent decades caring for this community. Now with the elimination of the lab assistant positions all of our patients people who rely on us will be forced to seek services elsewhere.
They will be told to go somewhere else But where many can't afford commercial labs that charge two and three times more than what we do. Some Medicare patients have even received surprise bills for basic lab work at a time when the cost of living continues to rise, this creates an unnecessary burden on people already struggling to make ends meet. And this isn't just about our patients it's about all workers like me I'm the only provider of my income and if I lose this job I lose everything My paycheck, my health insurance and my stability. I will be pushed into retirement long before I'm ready and at my age, I know the chances of being hired again are slim. Like so many other people we serve, I live paycheck to paycheck. Losing my job doesn't just mean losing work it means losing my security and my future.
So today I ask you please direct our department heads to stop these layoffs. Let's protect the services of our community depends on and let's protect the workers who have dedicated their lives in serving Santa Barbara County We are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. We are the hands, the skills and the compassion that keeps this system working. Thank you for your time.
Good morning Chair and members of the Board. My name is Yolanda Romo-Rodriguez, a registered nurse at Lompoc Health Care Center and a proud SEIU local member. I've served Santa Barbara County for nearly 23 years, dedicated my life to public health and the underserved. We vaccinated newborns, supported families through illness and addiction and helped save lives. During that pandemic we worked tirelessly to educate test and vaccinate our community. We showed up when it mattered most now facing potential layoffs I urge you to remember our value my family has already felt the impact of the federal cuts Further reductions will harm not just our workers, but our whole communities the ones that we serve Say no to these layoffs. Please we've stood by Santa Barbara County.
Please stand by us Thank you
And if that concludes all one-minute requests to speak here in Santa Barbara I'm going to move to Santa Maria And we will begin in Santa Maria with Elvia Salazar to be followed by Michelle Ambrose. Elvia? Hold
on one moment.
Elvia do you have anyone to translate for you that you would like we can double the time if you would like to have your comments translated. Oh thank you so much.
My name is Elvio Salazar Salinas with the Future Leaders of America.
Y el dia de hoy quiero hacer presencia pero sobre todo quiero que mi voz se escuche.
And today I want to make a presence and overall, I want to make sure that my voice feels heard. Y
quiero comenzar con nuestro lema que dice un condado un futuro
And I want to start by saying this phrase one county, one future.
La pregunta es que futuro ven atacando a nuestra comunidad? Que futuro ven para nuestro condado si no paran las persecuciones?
And the question i have is what future do we have in our county with the attacks What future do we have in our county with the prosecutions.
I order. Getting kicked out. No it's not said he says this I don't. Say to me she was indispensable is but I give I don' t be that big enough when I beat us on.
And now they want to take away health services that are indispensable for a healthy life.
2:16 – 2:2227 turns
Not then You don't see all of the negative impacts that this will bring to our community. Employments are falling down,
Employments that are sustained for their family.
Community
members you are not alone we are here for you thank you.
Thank you, we will now go to Michelle Ambrose to be followed by Ronaldo Rodriguez. Michelle?
Good morning County Board Supervisors. My name is Michelle Ambriz, I am a policy advocate with CAUSE and I am here today in strong opposition for the proposal to transfer patients based on immigration status. Part of my job at CAUSE is to provide support to pregnant and postpartum farm workers through Dara Luz, a program that helps them receive information on their rights to better work conditions and provides legal support while they navigate health care during pregnancy. Pregnant farm workers face many Pregnant farm workers face many risks like heavy lifting, heat falls and exposure to pesticides like organophosphates. Which cause abnormal effects on newborns including elevated risk of ADHD, ASD along with other health effects. In fact Santa Barbara County ranks sixth in organophosphate use compared to other California counties.
Meaning that due to their line of work access to healthcare is imperative for farm workers and their children. Many who are undocumented farm workers that will fall under UIS and be impacted by this policy. If these parents aren't receiving adequate access to health care then that increases their inability to provide adequate health care for their family, leaving undocumented farmworker families at a disadvantage.
I ask for a commitment to transparency around how and why Santa Barbara County is making these changes. I asked for you to put off any transfer of UIS patients while there's an injunction and I ask that you relocate surplus funding and bargain in good faith to avert layoffs.
We will now go to Ronaldo Rodriguez be followed by Yaneri Martinez. Ronaldo?
Good morning, my name is Reinaldo Rodriguez. I'm a community organizer with MICOP.
And I am here today to ask for your intervention to support the attention of health service of our community members Las políticas públicas federales son muy injusto con nuestra comunidad trabajadora y tan es así que lejos de reconocer su gran labor día a día.
The federal public policy is very unjust with our community members, especially on their daily living.
Hoy quieren afectar al sector salud y recortar personal restringir el acceso a los servicios médicos a la comunidad.
Today they want to enforce policies on the public sector and restrain access to healthcare for our community.
This is clearly a demonstration against the law of long time fight for health services. And today I'm here in this meeting to ask you as our elected official to take action and look into the interest of our community members, the farm working community and especially for people in the health sector.
We are just simply asking for something just and
fair.
Thank you.
We will now go to Yaneri Martinez to be followed by Gabriel Mendoza.
Buenos dias, mi nombre es Yaneri Martinez, navegadora de salud con MiCOP.
Good morning, my name is Yaneri Martinez, a health navigator with My Cup.
Les insto a detener la propuesta del condado de dejar de atender a pacientes según su estatus migratorio.
And today I'm here to urge you as the County Board of Supervisors to stop this transfer of help for our community members.
Esta propuesta interrumpirá la atención médica de 7500 residentes del condado y sus familias
This proposal will interrupt the medical attention of 7,500 residents in Santa Barbara County and their family members.
Sabemos lo difícil que es para nuestra comunidad acceder a recursos básicos.
We know how challenging it is for our community members to have access for basic needs.
Esto debido al costo de estos recursos la barrera del idioma y mucho más
And this is due to the challenges of having access to these services and especially the language challenges that it implies.
2:22 – 2:2822 turns
Let's take action and protect the well-being of our community members who work hard to maintain this county. Por favor hagan lo correcto y protejan el acceso de nuestras comunidades a la atención medica.
Please do the right thing and protect our community members and their access to health care.
Gracias.
Thank you.
We will now go to Gabriel Mendoza to be followed by Anna Hyen. Hello
Supervisors. Gabriel Mendoza, a guest manager with My Cup. And I live and work in Santa Maria where we serve many indigenous migrants. I'm here today to urge you to not move forward with the proposed transfer of immigrant patient out of the county health clinics. Why you didn't create a consultative and collaborative process with your community partners? This is being called a transfer by patients are not being given a choice or any assurance of continued care.
Please take responsibility for the chaos, scares, confusion this decision has already caused of the recent changes of medical. Transferring any or all of the 7,500 undocumented immigrant community members out of the clinics will directly harm our community health and well-being. It will cause fear, confusion and uncertainty among families who already face enormous barriers to accessing care. Community especially indigenous migrants are already facing significant barriers in linguistic and cultural.
People will hesitate to seek medical help when they need it the most.
Thank you
Gabriel that is your time. This decision is based on fear but I'm asking you to prioritize your community thank you
We will now go to Anna Hyen. And if there is anyone else who would like to speak for one minute, you are welcome to go after Anna. Just please state your first and last name for the record. Thank you. Anna?
Good morning. My name is Anna Nguyen, Program Director with MICOP and first of all I'd like to request that there is language access interpretation in both regions Santa Barbara and Santa Maria in all meetings as you just never know when community members are going to show up and speak a language other than English so I highly urge you to please consider that for every meeting in both regions Something else I'd like to speak on is, I'm really concerned about the community members that speak an indigenous language falling through the cracks through all of what's happening right now. There's already a lot of confusion, there's already a lot of miscommunication going around our county and those of us that work in support the indigenous community directly We are also trying to figure out how to support this community, so please communicate with us.
Please be transparent so that we can in turn support you through this transition period as well. Thank you.
And are there any other members who would like to speak for one minute? If you can please state your first and last name that would be greatly appreciated.
Good morning, my name is Fernando Martinez. As you know I'm not an interpreter so it is very very important to have interpretation services available especially when we talk about health care that's going to affect communities not only in Santa Maria but across Santa Barbara County The public health plans to stop serving the patients with what is called unsatisfactory immigration status, a term that affects not only undocumented individuals but some lawfully present immigrants as well. This is based on a Trump policy era already blocked by the federal courts yet our county is choosing to obey in advance.
This is the start of segregation putting those privileged and put in those who are underprivileged. This move is legally questionable and morally wrong. This strips healthcare for 7,500 community members and the risk of jobs of 55 health workers. And I stand in solidarity with my union brothers and sisters from SEIU. We heard about these harmful changes months ago, now we are living it. What's next? Let's be clear, these decisions hurt families, harm workers and put lives at risk. I challenge you to stand up for healthcare and labor for all walks of life. Thank you.
And Fernando, I don't have a speaker slip for you. So just a friendly reminder if you didn't submit a speaker slip the public comment period has been closed. Okay thank you. For anyone... I did turn one in. Okay perhaps Yesenia can help assist us with that but for anyone that hasn't turned in a speaker slip the public comment period was closed at 1105 so only those members with speaker slips can speak. Is there anyone else in Santa Maria that would like to speak for one minute?
Great if you can
please. Hola mi nombre es Fabian, soy navegador de salud conmigo. Hola mi nombre es Fabián, soy navegador de salud conmigo.
Hello my name is Fabian Garcia, health navigator with My Cup.
Yo vivo y trabajo aquí en Santa Maria.
I live and work in Santa Maria.
Incito a la Junta de Supervisoras a priorizar el acceso a la atención médica
I urge the supervisors to prioritize the access to medical healthcare
for all Santa
Barbara County residents,
independent of their immigration status.
2:28 – 2:3416 turns
Because we are asking transparency as to why the County of Santa Barbara is implementing these changes.
And
these cuts in this period.
We need you to compromise, to include and consult with the community around this decision. Please do the correct thing by protecting access to our communities, to medical care. Thank you
All righty, and just again we aren't receiving any of these speaker slips from those members in Santa Maria that are speaking. So if Yesenia can please assist us up there perhaps there was a miscommunication with the speaker slips but if you did not submit a speaker slip to Yesenia and we did not receive it please hold your comments for those members in Santa Maria that did submit speaker slips thank you.
We did? Yeah, we submitted them.
Is there anyone else in Santa Maria that would like to speak for one minute?
So so we did submit them. Do we I don't do we wait for you to say not to check on that?
Can you please just proceed and state the first and last name?
Hello my name is Diana Robles, a health navigator with My Cup and I live and work in Santa Maria. I urge the Board of Supervisors to prioritize healthcare access to all residents of Santa Barbara regardless of immigration status because I know how difficult it is for immigrant families to find resources under these circumstances and by transferring Thank you. Are there any other members of the public wanting to speak for one minute in Santa
Dear members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to speak. Sorry can you please
state your first and last name for the record?
Oh yes I'm getting that. My name is Pierre Calvo and I am the IT Enterprise Data Supervisor for Social Services. Our department doesn't produce products we provide essential services. The value we offer comes from the talent and ingenuity of our employees. Laying off staff to save money is short-sighted. To drive some real world data in, my team who consists of seasoned professionals but also new to the county has built tools that save the county hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
They've identified EBT card skimmers and successfully taken them off the streets. They produce critical data mandated by state and federal governments, and customize and build software that vendors have quotas in the hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more, and they build it in record time way faster than any contractor can. These layoffs won't just hurt employees. They'll delay services. They'll disrupt care and leave residents waiting in line having to take time off their workday instead of accessing the help they need from home.
I urge you to choose furloughs over layoffs, because with layoffs every dollar saved today could potentially cost all of us $10 tomorrow.
Thank
You Pierre that is your time and consideration
Hello, my name is Sandra Sanchez and I've worked for social services for the past two and a half years. I'm a proud member of the SEIU local 620 and I love serving my community. I am here today not just because I am opposed to the layoffs, but also as a single mother who depends for this job to support myself and also for my son's education. These layoffs if they were to go into effect would not only devastate my family but many other families in the community. We are the first faces that the community sees When they need us the most, we're the ones that are there. We're the most helpful.
Cutting us would make the processes feel longer and harder for them when they are in the time of need. I urge you and direct your department's heads to stop these unnecessary layoffs and perhaps think of another solution and protect the workers that the county is... To protect the families that rely on us. Thank you.
2:34 – 2:3915 turns
Good morning board and ladies and gentlemen, my name is Lourdes Navarro. I'm an AOP at the Department of Social Services in Santa Maria. I am also a union steward for the past 27 years. Good morning, everyone. My name is Barbara. I'm working for the department. I am on the team mitigating the impact on your staff and services to the taxpaying public your employers.
Our We are transferring staff that would be laid off to other departments, and we've been met with either no or we don't know. At this point I keep thinking of more ideas. It's...I know it's a tough time for everyone I did notice that on the layoff list of positions that most were direct frontline employees that serve the public. The taxpayer, your employers. Thank
you.
That is your time. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
Madam Chair can we make an announcement in Santa Maria as well about the difference between item one and item two? I think we're bleeding over into item two as well now and I just don't want to see... I mean it's kind of the same argument but There's actually a big difference between item one and two also. And I will let Yesenia know that there is help coming over from D4, trying to get this public comment put together up in Santa Maria. We don't have a list and so it's a little bit difficult to work with.
Madam Clerk, did you want to take
this? Yes. Chair Kaps and members of the board yes for all members both here in Santa Barbara in Santa Maria and joining us via zoom I just want to reiterate we are currently discussing departmental item number one This is from the County Health Department as a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the county health departments budget rebalancing plan To address a revenue shortfall for federal federally qualified health centers in fiscal year 2526 There is an additional item that we have not gotten to yet, that we will be hearing later after departmental item number one from Social Services Department regarding the Department of Social Services budget update and rebalancing plans. So for all members of the public that are speaking now if you can please limit your comments to the item we are on right now regarding County Health Department's budget that would be greatly appreciated.
And we can return to Santa Maria
Good morning, Supervisor. My name is Sergio Castillo. I am Community Organizer at MICO. I'm here today to urge you immediately stop the proposed transfer of immigrant patients out of county health clinics. Healthcare is not a privilege. It's rights. This award is not a handout. It is justice. I demand that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors put an end to this injustice.
No more layoffs. No more forced disemployment. No more decision made without the voice of those most affected. There is not a simple administrative adjustment, it's a decision that turns lives, destabilizes families and put at risk essential services that sustain our community. We are because we live in local government that protects its people. We are asking for privilege. We are not asking for privilege, we're demanding for fair access to health care, job security and above all respect. Thank you
Buenos dias a todos. Mi nombre es Francisca Salvador. Good morning my name is Francisca Salvador. Soy navegadora de recursos con MECOP, vivo y trabajo en Santa Maria California.
My resource navigator with MECOP I reside in Santa Maria California.
I urge the supervisors to prioritize access to health care for all Santa Barbara County residents independent of their
immigration status. We work directly with the community
And
we
know how hard it is to navigate these systems. Please do what's right and protect health access to our indigenous communities, thank you.
And my apologies can you please repeat your first and last name? Is that Francisca? Perfect, thank you.
2:39 – 2:458 turns
Hello board my name is Leo Decasals first I want to make an announcement that a lot of our members here today have taken a vacation request and they need to speak whether it's on D1 or D2 right now as they have to get back to work to serve the community So it's all about cutting services, it's all about laying people off and leaving the community out. So it's very much altogether again your labor force is here today in Santa Maria because we're deeply concerned about the proposals to eliminate over 176 full-time positions these are not just numbers these are real people public servants who show up every day to deliver critical services to our community. The county's recommending these cuts preemptively Rather than discussing how to lay off employees and reduce access to care, we should be talking about how to preserve these services and protect the people who rely on them.
DSS is also facing cuts this is a double blow to the public affecting both health and social support system caseloads are not decreasing clients are not disappearing the funding the county receives from the state is not being reduced yet by eliminating staff we are effectively removing these resources from the communities that they are meant to serve Let's say no to cutting services, let's say no to layoffs and I'd say yes to protecting our community and the workers who serve it. Thank you
Thank you and Chair Kaps, members of the board. Before we proceed I just wanted to make it very clear if that is the case and the board would like to hear from both or from the public on both items at this time since there is a critical time limit. I would like to just read departmental item number two into the record so it's very clear we are discussing, we can be discussing both during public comment. Yeah
I want to respect people's work in the time that they've
taken so it absolutely fine with me. So some of our comments will be in regards to departmental item number two, which is from the Social Services Department. It's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the Department of Social Services DSS fiscal year 2025 through 2026 budget update and rebalancing plan and we will be hearing Presentation from the department on this shortly, but we will allow for public comment during this period that we are discussing departmental item number one. Thank you And are there any other members from Santa Maria that would like to speak for one minute?
If there are please make your way to the podium and if you can please just clearly state your first and last name for us I Thank you.
Hi, my name is Britannia Irwin social worker with CWS I'm asking for zero layoffs each of these positions represent safety prevention and stability for the most vulnerable people in our community. I know you are aware of this when you cut these positions the work still has to be done but it gets pushed on to the remaining staff who are already stretched to their limit We are burnt out. We have 55 unfilled positions that the rest of us have stepped up to do their jobs. Who will do the work of 120 people to meet legal mandates and ensure child safety?
There was an abrupt change in how funds were spent these last four months, and a lack of transparency from management to frontline staff about the severity. Let's realign funds over time to continue to serve the community in a safe way without burning out the employees left behind. Thank you.
Hello, my name is Rob Adam Perry with CIU Local 620. I wanted to say thank you to the board today for hearing our topics and our issues and our concerns. I wanted to thank everybody for being here today all of our members in the community resources My presentation today is about agreeing with Mrs. Capps about delaying the vote and I'm hopeful in the next section that you will also make the same proposal, one of you will make the same proposal about delaying the vote on social services and the primary reason is mainly because of all the questions that you've had today were all the questions that we came up with as well primarily of not having a lot of input in some of these decisions. So with that I want to say thank you and please delay the vote
okay.
Are there any other members of the public in Santa Maria that would like to speak for one minute? If not, I do have a couple names for a minute and a half.
2:45 – 2:508 turns
I can try to do mine in a minute. My name is Jonathan Castillo.
All righty thank you please proceed.
Good morning members of the board my name is Jonathan Castillo I'm an AOP in public health. I manage clinic inquiries insurance eligibility request appointments I'm often the first point of contact for patients and I help keep our clinic running efficiently so we can serve our community. Now my position and my wife's who works in social services are both at risk under the proposed layoffs. We're a working family trying to stay afloat, and this proposal threatens not only our livelihood but services of our community depends on. I understand the county is facing a deficit, but there's also 14 million surplus proposed for jail expansion while 100 public service jobs are being eliminated many which already vacant.
Why invest in expanding the jail when we can preserve the staff who prevent people from ending up there in the first place? Public health, social services are prevention systems. Cutting them will only shift costs elsewhere and hurt the people we serve most. I urge you to vote no on these layoffs. Protect your workers who protect the community. Thank you
All righty, if that concludes all one minute requests to speak I will actually let's just remain in Santa Maria since we're there and we can go to Eva Barajas to be followed by Veronica Polito. Eva?
Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Eva Barajas and I've been in AOP with the Department of Social Services for one year. I'm also a proud SEIU Local 620 member. In my role, I'm often the first point of contact for clients seeking help. I come to work every day to serve our most vulnerable community members, people who are worried about putting food on the table, facing eviction or trying to secure health coverage. These are not just cases, these are lives and they depend on us.
If the proposed layoffs are approved, many of the faces you see here today may soon be in the same situation as the clients we serve struggling to get by. We are asking you to reconsider there is currently a 14 million dollar surplus and yet the county is considering using that money to expand the Northern County Jail. Our community doesn't need more jail beds it needs social services If these layoffs go through, it sends a message that the county is investing in incarceration over prevention. That it's willing to fund the pipeline to jail rather than the programs that help people avoid it. That's not a budget decision, it's a values decision.
The mission of the Department of Social Services is to help our community be safe, supported and self-sufficient. I believe that mission should extend to the employees who carry it out. We are asking you to stand by us not just as workers but as part of the safety net that holds this county together. Please choose to protect the services and the people who make them possible. Thank you.
We will now go to Veronica Pulido, to be followed by Leticia Alvarez-Salas. Is there a Veronica? Pulido in Santa Maria? Perhaps they left. How about Leticia Alvarez-Salas? All righty thank you.
Good afternoon, my name is Leticia Alvarez. I have proudly served Santa Barbara County for over 15 years working directly with clients who rely on county benefits to survive. I'm a member of the SOU Local 620 and I'm here today because proposed layoffs will devastate not just employees but the vulnerable families we serve. Every day I help people who are homeless, facing medical emergencies or struggling to feed their children. If we lost staff those emergencies won't be handled in time that means families going without food shelter or urgent medical care. We're not just workers were left lines.
I love my job because helping people, seeing a child smile because their parent finally feels relief. That's what keeps me going but I'm also a single mother caring for my children and elderly parents. If I lose my job, my household suffers with the cost of living so high. Losing income is not scary, it's unsustainable. We're asking to protect the services our community depends on, protect the workers who make those services possible. No layoffs. Let us keep doing the work that keeps County strong.
And we will now go to Winona Mounts to be followed by Ruby Ramirez, Winona.
2:50 – 2:568 turns
Good morning my name is Winona Mounts I'm an eligibility worker at the Department of Social Services and in the Benefit Service Center. I do ongoing Medi-Cal and CalFresh determinations for clients, for the whole county at the Benefit Service Center. I've been an employee with the County of Santa Barbara for two and a half years. We're already behind on things and stressed out.
We are currently processing August 2024 Medi-Cal renewals And a lot of times when we are processing CalFresh redeterminations, we're also having to do their SAR 7 reports at the same time. Because of already being so far behind I ask for zero layoffs and our workers you know you don't get into social services for the money. So we already don't make a lot of money and some of our people are already on aid. So single moms and people Who are my co-workers are going to be in the same lines and they're going to be processed late because we won't have enough people to process things timely and get our own people served.
Thank
you. We will now go to Ruby Ramirez to be followed by Daniel Ibarra.
Hello board, my name is Ruby Ramirez. I'm new to the county only nine months in as a career employment specialist that means I work with some of our most vulnerable families that rely on having trust and clear communication with what's going on with their lives and benefits It takes a lot of time to build rapport and with these layoffs, it'll propose them getting new workers that then will eliminate that trust in services that go to them.
I myself have three young children that I provide for and I am one who is a paycheck away from being on the other side of the table of my clients. I urge you to reallocate funds so that we can focus on serving our clients rather than focusing money to incarcerate them. Thank you.
We will now go to Daniel Ibarra to be followed by Brandy Anderson. Daniel?
Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Daniel Ibarra Nunez and I am a social worker on the Assessments and Investigation Unit of Child Welfare Services here in the Santa Maria region. Our unit is responsible for investigating reports of suspected child abuse and neglect, a task that demands time, attention, and care. In recent months, social workers have been asked to complete our work with minimal or no overtime. At the same time many of our support services contracts have been reduced or eliminated limiting the help we can provide to children and families. The proposed workforce reduction poses a serious risk to both child safety and worker effectiveness. When a social worker leaves their cases don't disappear They are reassigned adding to already heavy caseloads.
This limits the time workers have to conduct thorough investigation, complete case plans and ensure no critical detail is overlooked. In our line of work even the smallest detail can mean the difference between a child's safety and tragedy. Clients have already voiced frustration as meetings grow shorter and workers are forced to race the clock. We all know too well the heartbreaking consequences that can occur when systems are stretched too thin. Santa Barbara County Child Welfare Services has always stood firm that nothing is more important than a child's safety, but this reduction directly threatens that principle. No amount of budget savings is worth the life of a child. We respectfully urge you to adopt a budget that prioritizes child safety, supports adequate staffing and prevents the domino effect of burnout and turnover.
We ask for a budget with zero layoffs because every position lost can mean a child left unsafe. Thank you
And we will now hear from Brandy Anderson to be followed by Steve Hernandez, who is the final speaker I have for Santa Maria. So please let Yesenia know if you've been missed. Brandy?
Good afternoon, board members. My name is Brandy Anderson and I'm a proud SEIU member working with the Welfare to Work Program for Social Services. I'm speaking today not just as a county employee but as a wife and a resident of Santa Maria. My husband and I both work for the county. I in social services and he in public health. These proposed layoffs put both of our jobs at risk. This isn't just about numbers it's about our family and our ability to continue serving the community that we love.
In my role I help parents find jobs, go back to school and work towards self-sufficiency. If these positions are cut those families will slip through the cracks. Their benefits will be delayed and their children will go without. CalWORKs and CalFresh help prevent child abuse and homelessness by giving family stability. The county says there's a deficit but there is also a $14 million surplus more than enough to cover the shortfall without layoffs.
Yet, the surplus is being used to expand a jail that's already new. We should be investing in our people and not punishment. 55 of the 100 plus proposed layoffs are already vacant. The county is saving money there. This proposal is unnecessary and unfair. Please vote no on layoffs. Protect our workers, protect our families, and protect our future. Thank you.
And we will now go to Steve
Hernandez.
2:56 – 3:0323 turns
Good morning, my name is Steve Hernandez. Whether you're an eligibility worker essential in providing vital benefits to families or a social worker whose primary goal is to offer care, support and protection to children and adults in our county we are all facing the growing burden of a depleted workforce. Now an additional 121 positions are at risk of elimination.
The consequences of this are alarming. Longer wait times for the approval renewal of benefits for clients in an already backed up log our workers already have. Emergency cases that could be neglected or significantly delayed Interruptions to essential services including food assistance, housing support and access to health care. With fewer staff our current employees are overwhelmed this leads to burnout increased errors low morale and higher turnover rates creating a vicious cycle that continues to worsen workers as of now don't have the capacity to offer the high quality support that our clients deserve imagine when 121 positions are going to be cut Those hit hardest are the people who rely on these services the most. Low-income families, the elderly individuals with disabilities and children they will now face more delays in access to basic needs such as food shelter and medical care their mental health and emotional stability suffer under the weight of uncertainty this system we provide is a lifeline of basic needs to survive it is often the only barrier between individuals and circumstances that could devastate the people we serve and their families As a member of this community and a proud SEIU member, we must ask why does this keep happening in the same department?
Why has this department faced repeated crisis over the last 10 years? Where is the accountability for those making these decisions that repeatedly put our members and the people that we serve in such perilous position.
Thank you. And before I return here to Santa Barbara, it appears we have a couple members on Zoom who would like to speak for one minute. We are going to begin with Mahdi Ashrafian to be followed by Thomas Becker. Mahdi? Mahdi, we have unmuted you on our end if you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments. All righty, perhaps Mahdi has stepped away. We are now going to go to
Thomas. Hello? Can you hear me?
Yes we can.
I am so sorry i was having a system error thank you so much. I just wanted to mention that my name is Mahdi Ashrafian and I'm the CEO of Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics. I'm one of the major FQHCs in south counties and the non-profit over there. I have had the pleasure to meet some of you and I've had the pleasure of working with Dr. Hammami and the county officials for the last two weeks going through a lot of these changes, last month actually, and SenCal. I just wanted to mention some of the things that we as a federally qualified health center who operates under the umbrella of CPCA which is California Primary Care Associations I wanted to mention that as of today, we have a very strong injunction And per my conversations with CPCA Legal Counsel, you're not aware of any retroactive penalties.
And again this is based on the counsel that CPCA has given us because we have the exact same concerns that Dr. Hammami very nicely mentioned as well and as far as we are aware as of today there has not been any stay on the injunction In fact, on September 10th they tried to do it but it was rejected in Rhode Island. So as of today as far as we are aware there's no stay on the injunction and the injunction is pretty strong.
I want to mention that it is very sad time for all the federally qualified health centers including Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinic with all these changes in the healthcare However, I know for a fact that county not being able to see the UIS patients or specialty care services would negatively affect definitely for sure other nonprofits in the area such as Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinic, Cottage Health and other nonprofits as well.
Thank you. Thank you Mahdi. That is your time.
Thank you so much.
We will now hear from Thomas Becker and then we will return to Santa Barbara with Larry Barrett. Thomas?
Can I just ask a question of Marty, please?
Hello?
Sorry about that.
Yes I am here. Hello?
I just wanted to know, I don't know if we've had a lot of conversations about this could I imagine you'd be open to that if that hasn't happened yet since you would be since you're in this as another federally qualified clinic but have there been conversations about this plan?
Supervisor Capps, yes there has been conversations of the plan. We have had several discussions and I just wanted to, yes we will continue to have those conversations. We have an amazing relationship with County but I just wanted you to hear from another non-profit, another FQHC how this will, how we perceive
this. Okay thank you so much for weighing in. I really appreciate it. Thank you
We will now go to Thomas Becker and my apologies Larry, we did have an additional request to speak for one minute on zoom. Thomas Becker then we will go to Anastasia Zenofsky. Thomas?
Thank you can you hear me?
Yes we can please proceed
Thank you. Since you admitted to knowing that at least 7,500 illegal aliens are receiving federally funded benefits then you had to know that those federal benefits were being provided to illegal aliens most likely in violation of current federal law. It is also likely that county employees know the names of illegal aliens receiving federal benefits and were and are fully aware of their illegal alien status.
For the past 11 months, I have been warning you of the real possibility of federal audits of county records. It is likely that United States Department of Justice will perform forensic audits of county records and interview all county employees to discover all employees who were aware that federal funds were being given to illegal aliens in violation of federal law.
The county may be required- That is your time. No, I get a minute and a half. I want a minute and a half.
Thomas you raised your hand for one minute?
I did not. I did not. I raised it for a minute and a half. Okay. I would like another 30 seconds.
Please proceed with 30 more seconds.
Thank you. The county may be required to repay the funding provided in violation of federal law. The feds will not allow federal funds to be used to backfill Medi-Cal funding lost by transfers of state funding to illegal aliens. If the warnings had been heeded and federal law followed, health benefits would have been maintained instead of being lost. Thank you.
3:04 – 3:097 turns
And it looks like Anastasia lowered her hand. So we will now return to Santa Barbara with a minute and a half to begin with Larry Barrett, to be followed by Megan Overland. Larry?
Thank you board members, I'm Larry Barrett with Indivisible Santa Barbara representing the 805 Evergreen Coalition. Chair Kapsch, I support your proposal and here are reasons why. First, while the county asked for community trust you did not proceed in this manner in a trustworthy way. The community that you are representing was left out. Two, the plan that you are putting forward that you're considering will not provide continuity of care One senior state official I spoke to last week described the plan as a band-aid on a gaping wound and assured me the plan will crumble under the same pressure you're facing.
Three, there's no assurance this plan will continue federal funding. As we've heard today demands from the Trump administration come fast and furious you are at most addressing one of them. Four, Dr. Hammami I heard what you said about 75% of your patients but what happens when the Trump administration comes after other vulnerable populations like our LGBTQ plus friends?
And that 75% number dwindles The only way to guarantee that 75% is to stand for the 100%. Five, there's no hope in capitulation trying to soften the blow. Our hope is to fight for the entire community if only to ensure that a community continues to exist and remains to fight for us. Thank you.
We will now go to Megan Overland to be followed by Eric Baser.
Thank you Supervisors. My name is Megan Overland on behalf of the Santa Barbara Transgender Advocacy Network. Hearing the news this action worried me, it worried me for the patients that will be directly affected. It worried me for the downstream effects on our medical system and it worries me the message it's sending to our community as a member of the transgender community seeing Vulnerable people in our community being deprived of medical services sends a message that that's what's in line for us as well when the time comes. That the community will not stand up, the county would not stand up for us.
So we're worried and my ask is to pursue Supervisor Kapp's plan to delay this and as was mentioned earlier Please develop a plan for dealing with this because this is not the end. This is just the beginning as was mentioned there are a laundry list of things they're going to ask if you that are going to go against our values so please create a plan that leads by putting people above money that sticks to our values that engages the whole community and That realizes that the federal government is not our ally right now.
And that we need to figure out how we can do this and provide all the services we need as a community together. Thank you Supervisors.
We will now go to Eric Baser, to be followed by Laura Robinson. Eric? Is Eric not here? All righty we will go to Laura Robinson to be followed by Meg Baird.
Hello chair caps members of the board. My name is Laura Robinson, executive director of SEIU local 620 the union that represents the vast majority of this county's workforce and today I'm here on their behalf and on behalf of the communities they serve to urge you to utilize the 14.7 million year in surplus to close the revised budget deficits in County Health and Social Services.
These departments are not just programs there at the last line of defense for our most vulnerable residents They keep families housed, elders cared for, children safe and those in crisis supported. Gutting them now would be a devastating blow to those already being attacked from every angle. We know we're in uncertain political times. Policies are shifting at a whim and the ground beneath us feels unstable, but this moment won't last forever. Help us push through it. Planning for the worst is prudent, but implementing cuts before they're required is premature and harmful. Provide the public with the information, give them care options, but don't eliminate those options before the need is clear.
Honestly, this is a moral decision. Your policy choices reflect your priorities and right now you're being asked to choose between care and confinement. Throwing the surplus at the North County Jail just to save $1 million in borrowing costs is not just short-sighted it's unjust. We'll have to borrow for that jail no matter what but we don't have to abandon the very services that help keep people out of it.
I know this board cares deeply about this community and their employees. I know you want to fight against these injustices, so fight! Stand with your unions, stand with your employees, stand with your constituents. Investigate every alternative, exhaust every option and prioritize the people who make this county work. No layoffs and no cuts to county services. Thank you.
We will now go to Meg Baird to be followed by Skye Baird.
3:09 – 3:158 turns
Yes, Meg Beard County Health. We stood here in August for our breastfeeding proclamation. I'm a lactation consultant and dietitian and we appreciate Jones Hartman attending our event at Lompoc Valley Medical Center so we appreciate all your breastfeeding support throughout the years. I've been here 27 years and I'm proud to work for county health County health has always been referred to as a safety net for Santa Barbara County families. We are trusted brand, as we've heard over and over today already.
It sure doesn't feel like it these days. I am concerned about what's going on. We watched the Sheriff Department get bailed out for overtime costs the last four out of five years, we see B Wells deficit covered for several years and fire in the past too. We understand that county has a $14.75 million surplus. County has always been fiscally responsible. Please help out the safety net this time. You know how hard it is to hire once we lose staff, it's nearly impossible in this county.
Our patients are scared to come here to County Health for services just like they are to go to the grocery store or to school. We need immigrant labor in this county. Please help us through the tough times. We also need an OB doctor. How about a $200,000 signing bonus? For OB-GYN, ICE is giving $50,000 signing bonus. So it's not out of the question. Our breastfeeding programs internationally recognized and has won awards. We're a program of pride at Public Health Department. We are safety net for WIC and our breastfeeding families. County health, the safety net department deserves help just like the Board of Supervisors does for other departments. Thank you for your time.
We will now go to Skye Baird to be followed by Cheyenne Rosin. Skye?
That's my son, he had to go back to school, to college. Thank you.
Sorry to hear that. Thank you for him joining us this morning. We will now go to Cheyenne Rosin to be followed by Fabiola Pascual.
Good afternoon, my name is Cheyenne Rawson and I've served Child Welfare Services for 12 years. First as a social worker, a supervisor and currently as a department business specialist Our county has avoided national headlines that follow tragic failures in child protection. But I fear that in cutting critical positions, we put ourselves at risk of becoming a front page expose or even the subject of a Netflix documentary.
These stories always center on a tragic case, a child failed by an overworked system. Cutting social services is not a solution it is a catalyst for tragedy. Our data already shows we are not meeting federal standards. We have worked hard on our system improvement plan, but these staff cuts will sabotage any chance of achieving those mandated outcomes. If this restructure moves forward, we will be able to report to the state that the Board of Supervisors agreed to cut the capacity staff needed to do their jobs.
A 50% increase in caseload is a direct path to critical case failure. You are asking staff to do more with less. The workload is already crushing and these cuts push us past breaking point. The work doesn't disappear when staff are laid off it simply transfers the burden. I firmly believe cutting these positions will lead to a higher financial strain on this county that will outweigh the salaries you are cutting. I urge you to reject these layoff recommendations, thank you.
We will now go to Fabiola Pascual to be followed by Bridget Day.
Fabiola? Good morning, Chair and members of the Board. My name is Fabiola. I've worked with County Health for the past two years. I support our frontline team many times as a front desk assistant helping visitors access services screening them for programs Distributing breastfeeding supplies and connecting them to community services. I also help organize outreach events and maintain relationships with our community partners, whom their staff will also be directly affected by this layoff plan.
Though my position isn't listed, I know firsthand how these cuts will ripple through our department. Fewer staff means more pressure, slower service, and delayed care. Our clients will be forced to navigate unfamiliar systems And many will fall through the cracks. I also want to emphasize how layoffs don't only mean lost jobs. For me it means struggling to pay rent, my student loans and pausing my education for my co-workers is providing for their families and more.
For our community it means fewer lifelines so the decision you make today will shape the future of our department or the decisions that you're thinking of making in the near future and the lives of those who we serve. I ask that you lead with compassion and courage, and our residents will remember how you responded when they needed you most. And I also ask you to not be complacent and to not be numb, and to keep the residents of the county at heart.
Thank you.
We will now go to Bridget Day to be followed by Angelica Falcone. Bridget?
3:15 – 3:228 turns
Good afternoon, Supervisors. My name is Bridget Day and I am the Political Coordinator with the Central Coast Labor Council. We're here today alongside our siblings from SEIU 620 and 721 as well as all of the community members impacted by these budget cuts. The decision to no longer provide health care to these immigrant populations will have a lasting and unknown impact.
We want to work with county staff and elected officials to ensure that any decision as harsh and irreversible as this isn't made without a robust effort to include the voices of all impacted communities, and that any resulting job cuts are bargained through good-faith negotiations with employee unions. We urge the county to hold the line until we are forced to comply with a court ruling. Please prioritize the voices of community members, talk to experts and work with us to find the best path forward in these difficult times. Thank you.
We will now go to Angelica Falcone to be followed by Gail Teton-Landis. Angelica?
Dear Honorable Supervisors, I am Angelica Falcon a foster care eligibility worker with nearly three decades of service. This current proposal disproportionately impacts our frontline essential workers with 65 layoffs slated from our already weakened staff those who directly serve our most vulnerable populations at the same time only two layoffs are being proposed amongst management This imbalance underscores a troubling inequity. The burden of budget reduction is again being shifted onto the essential workers who provide direct services, social workers, eligibility staff in Santa Barbara County serve across the spectrum of our community supporting our foster children, assisting families in crisis, protecting vulnerable adults. The demands for these services is not declining.
In fact it continues to grow. Cutting our frontline staff directly reduces the county's ability to meet urgent needs jeopardizing health, safety and the well-being of those we are entrusted to serve. I urge the board to carefully reconsider the proposed cuts. Our community cannot afford an already weakened safety net. I ask that you stand with the workers of Santa Barbara County who are dedicated, who dedicated their careers to public service and with our community members whose lives depend on the services we provide. On behalf of over 700 members of SEIU, we ask for zero layoffs and I wish to present to you these petitions. Thank you.
We will now go to Gail Teton-Landis to be followed by Angelica Jaramillo. Gail? I'm not seeing Gail. Did she leave perhaps? All righty, we will go to Angelica Jaramillo to be followed by Kiss the Comedian. Angelica? Did we lose Angelica? Alrighty, we will now go to Kiss the Comedian to be followed by Karen Hauenstein.
First thing I want to say is America's still the greatest country in the world. Let's not get it twisted. My name, I'm an artist, Kiss The Comedian. I'm on YouTube. Speaking of the Hatties people nobody from the 602 and 721 shall get fired. Am I right guys? I want to say that. You got to sit up there with your $1,000 suits getting your Mercedes go to your big house in Montecito next to Oprah, Costner, Prince Harry and Katy Perry nobody should get fired not on my watch just want to say that you know how many times I have okay I got a minute left you're not only firing 70 people you're firing their mothers fathers they have spouses neighbors kids you know you firing hundreds of people They have side checks, okay scratch that part. But I want to say and Steve Lafaganino looks like an evil version of Giant Ham from Bridesmaids.
I love your dad though. You lost me come on man give me something better than that. I'm I have a charity for my mom, Kiss the Comedian. I just want to say nobody deserves to get fired. This is great people. Donald Trump is the GOAT. Rest in peace Charlie Kirk who died an American hero. Thank you so much.
We will now go to Karen Hauenstein who's our final speaker on this item. My apologies, we have two additional speakers on Zoom. I still see you there my apologies. Karen and then we will go to zoom with Anastasia Sanofsky to be followed by Joshua Stalehook.
Karen? Thank You yes Karen Hauenstein. I am Coast Audits on YouTube here today we see this issue of It's actually chickens coming home to roost because this is a budget issue, not a social services issue or health issue. It's a budget issue instead of dogging the immigrant community why isn't this county prosecuting white collar crime? Just the illegal, highly controversial decisions made in error that touch me personally amounts to over $25 million in unnecessary payments made by this county.
And you guys like to start lawsuits. You need to start some lawsuits against individuals who do not deserve qualified immunity Individuals like Dennis Bozanich and we're going to have a Dennis Bozanich playlist on Coast Audits on YouTube. I encourage you guys well, we might even play it here during public comment because that's the man who does not deserve a pension from this county He doesn't even deserve what he was paid because the man made criminal decisions, got us in trouble just like the AMR debacle with that AMR settlement of $11 million.
We've got $4 million that was washed through 1807 West Highway 246 into Joyce Dudley's bank account. And that is your time. And KPMG? KPMg was a big waste of money.
We will now go to Zoom with Anastasia Sanofsky, to be followed by Joshua Stelhilk who is our final speaker. Anastasia?
3:22 – 3:288 turns
Hello. Okay you can hear me?
Yes we can please proceed.
Good afternoon Supervisors and SureCaps my name is Anastasia Sanofsky and I'm representing Planned Parenthood Central Coast Action Fund PPCCAF believes in a future where all people have equitable opportunity to experience health and wellness. Santa Barbara County's decision to comply in advance without public input process does not create an equitable opportunity for everyone in the community to receive the care they need and deserve.
PPCCAF stands in solidarity with the families affected by our county's decision making A decision that has broken trust. This decision was not made with community input or public deliberation, and it stands in opposition to the many other actions the county has taken to protect the undocumented community. We are left in disbelief. Disbelief and outrage by our leaders' actions as to why Santa Barbara wants to be a state leader in causing chaos and confusion.
But we are clear-eyed about the harm that is already resulting from this choice. Santa Barbara County's undocumented and immigrant communities will suffer, county health workers will be left without jobs, already impacted healthcare clinics and providers will be pushed beyond their limits to attempt to fill the gap, and trust in our leaders fades. The harm has already been done and continues.
Listen to the community members speaking today and on behalf of the thousands who can't, put a stop to this harmful force of action.
Thank you. We will now go to Joshua Stahilk and we just had a member who was not logged in but has now joined us Mariela Vee who will be our final speaker. Joshua?
Sorry, took a 2nd to unmute. My name is Joshua. I'm the policy director at the California immigrant Policy Center and I'm also a lawyer who's been monitoring the litigation that's underlying this recommendation very closely. And in essence, the Public Health Department is recommending the county preemptively comply with the Trump administration policy change pertaining to Perora despite that policy change being blocked by a federal court. And in deciding on that injunction, the court found that the suing states including California are likely to win the case. So the court has already tipped its hand that it believes this policy is likely unlawful.
And federal government made statements on the record in the case that there would be additional guidance and process before any actions would be taken against federal funding recipients worthy injunction to be lifted. And if they don't, the state and the county would have an additional legal claim against the federal government. So, the claim that the county would face immediate loss of federal funding. If the injunction were reversed by a higher court is simply not accurate. The departments and county councils leap to that worst case scenario just doesn't line up with the legal process or the representations that the federal government has made on the record in this case an H.
And let's be crystal clear, H.R. 1's new exclusions to Medi-Cal do not take effect until October of 2026 and that's under the statute so the county has a full year to plan for implementation of H. R. 1. That's prescribed by the H. r1 statute so the Trump administration can't accelerate that timeline without an act of Congress So we don't understand why the department is recommending that the Board of Supervisors rush this and we urge you to delay this decision so that the Department of Public Health can consult with and share information with the impacted communities. Thank you.
And with Joshua, that concludes our public comment as Mariella has logged off
Okay, thank you. That was a very respectful process, 57 speakers. Really appreciate every single person speaking today. So now we will go back to any other questions from the board based on public comment or anything else that you want to ask. Supervisor Hartman? Thank you Chair
Caps. I have just a clarifying statement about CENCAL Health's participation with the community. CENCAL Health has been convening regular stakeholder meetings both in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties through the CalAIM process. Over the summer and continuing into the fall, these meetings have included open discussions about the implications of recent federal mandates and how local federally qualified health centers might need to respond to the July 10th Federal Memo.
Participants in these meetings have included a wide range of community partners and service providers such as MICOP, Promotoras, First 5, Marion Cottage, Lompoc Hospital Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Barbara. I'm the Executive Director of the But they have been talking about the implications of this change. So, the county is not alone in this work. Other providers including American Indian Health and Services are making similar operational decisions and neighborhood clinics and community health centers are monitoring developments.
So from CENCAL the shared goal has been to stay informed, create as much coordination as possible and support communities through this rapidly changing policy landscape. I think that communications haven't been to the general public but there have been processes where this has been front and center and CENCAL has taken this role of leadership I'm just kind of
3:28 – 3:4416 turns
curious on housekeeping wise. So are we going to deal with you want to deal with number one first?
Yeah,
so I think they're very different.
Yes. So let's we can vote on number one or vote to continue either way and then we can go to D2. I do I think according to the clerk. The speakers have pretty much spoken to D2, so that'll be most likely faster. So we'll just take D1 right now.
Okay. Yeah. So what did you see kind of on this delay? What do you expect to happen? What would you like to see happen during the time before it comes back to
us? I mean, I was a constituent during COVID and I saw how then public health, now county You know did a ton of outreach and I think that that hasn't happened yet. I'm not Casting aspersions, I just think there's an opportunity again these aren't just advocates these are folks who? work hand in glove with the very patients we care so much about as a trusted messengers And I want we all want this If this plan needs to succeed, if it does move forward it needs to succeed and I want to make sure that folks are on board and they're not. And that just became really clear to me in the last week when they read about it in the paper That's how they learned and that shouldn't have happened. I take some responsibility, and I just want to work with County Health.
I know you have a public information officer. I don't know about your other outreach efforts but it seems as though we can do a lot of that. And I also want to learn more about the injunction. We just heard from a lawyer who had a different perspective. I think we have some more time. I know we don't have forever so Dr. Mami maybe you can speak to that?
Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm very glad that you mentioned COVID because we're dealing with this as if it's a pandemic. In fact, we are standing up our incident command system and we're activating our department operations center to deal with that transition. However, when COVID happened, we didn't go to the community to ask them whether there is COVID or not. We went there with a plan on how to respond to it. That decision is there.
That was public information, happened on July. What I heard and I respect everybody that spoke but I did not hear one single solution that does not get us against a decision that is still out there The community support that we want and we will go is how do we make sure as we are proceeding with this plan, we are seeking supports. We will need translation, we'll need transportation, we will need community affairs but the decision isn't whether we are going to go against an impending risk that is linked to a federal lawsuit or federal decree Or are we not? And I think this is where the clarity is being not clear. This is where we're muddling a loss of revenue decision versus a bigger picture that I heard everything from two extremes, from work with the community to stick it to the man.
That's not what I have to do. We serve everybody. We are not here to take a political stand or to side with anybody. There was a public comment that said, why is Dr. Hammami standing with President Trump, not with Governor Newsom? I don't have to stand with anybody. You did not hire me to stand with anybody, you hired me to serve everybody and this is what we're trying to do."
I very much appreciate that and I know a lot of rhetoric was has been thrown at you unfairly. I also know that this board and myself we've worked to really build trust with the immigrant community and that trust has been broken, and I do want to try to build it back and I think with some time again I appreciate we can't give everybody what they want, which is to fund everything.
But I do think that explaining this perhaps more gives more time and I'm going to stand with that position that outreach and communication will help a very challenging situation.
If I could... We're going to need some sort of guardrails though on what that time is because as Dr. Hammami stated, you know let's say let's say that the The administration, I don't see administration backing up on this. So they're going to continue to push, push, push, push, push eventually at some point it's gonna happen and if I've seen anything in this administration there is no runway there is no it's like tomorrow this is what we're doing and that's gonna put a lot of people at risk and so I understand that the need to wanna go out and talk to the community. It's always baffling to me when we always hear from people that say there's no public input on it, when I just spent the last couple hours hearing from the public. We have to have a hearing, a public hearing.
The five of us do not... Just so everybody understands how this works. We're not allowed to talk to each other outside of a meeting. So we can't devise a plan. I can talk to one other person. So I read a staff report. It comes with a staff recommendation that Dr. Hammami in his, with all of his background thought thinks this is the best method forward. That's a staff recommendation. Then we have to come up with the policy of how that works and the way we do that is we hold a public hearing you guys all get to come and say what you think and then it affects the way we're gonna vote. That's how this works so could there be a chance for us to go out and talk about this in the public more?
Maybe, but I didn't have a chance to even figure out where we were going. That's what this meeting was about. So this is our public outreach. This is how we're talking to the public. I'm okay with waiting a while but from what I heard today, I don't see any middle ground. I don't see there's not a lot of solutions like we're going to open up a different clinic or this person said hey we'll take you know it's like hey just give the middle finger to the administration. It's like that's awesome but what does that do? People are still gonna be without health care so I'm okay with You know, I don't want to be caught with 24 hours of how to try to find somebody that's.
But I didn't see anything as far as compromise or a path forward here, so.
Again, we, it's just, I do think there is a middle ground in that I have such respect for the immigrant advocates who have been working hand-in-glove over the last many years but definitely over the last 11 months with undocumented families, families of mixed status explaining their rights working with them, explaining what this might mean. We need their trusted voice in this and if there's still confusion or anger or I hope some ground has been covered today with some of the information that's been conveyed.
This is a lot to take in. This is a massive decision and yeah we just spent a couple hours but I would argue that it deserved
A few of these. This is a major decision that
has been made and it's been put in the context of a budget decision as has been pointed out and not really the underlying decision. And that's something that I reacted against, it's like this let's talk about the underlying issue as opposed to the workforce which is also extremely big and really meaningful for people's lives so it's just too much and I just want to say timeout because I feel as though we do have the time and as a supervisor that's my right to say hey timeout we have time I get that people are not happy.
And honestly, that's what this White House wants is that you know this is being imposed on us and this division is now being sewn at us. That's fine. We can take it. That's what we get paid to do but let's at least maybe you have learned something today a little bit about why and the pressures and the fact that we are, the doctors and the medical staff are really trying to be methodical.
And so that message can be carried to the patients who are going to be handed a new provider. Again I want to learn more about the litigation and call me an optimist but maybe this injunction holds.
I agree with that. I just say it would also be helpful if those trusted voices that are speaking to the immigrant community would not continue to say we're kicking people out of health care, that we're standing alongside President Trump. I mean let's be honest with what's happening here you can be mad at somebody and I know you can't go to DC and protest outside the White House is what you want to do and kick their butt but Let's be honest with what's really happening to so maybe that might be what can happen in these meetings that we have moving forward I would
hope.
Supervisor Hartman. Well I appreciate everybody who came today, our employees. You are as someone said the talent and ingenuity that makes this county run and this is a really really painful time for all of us trying to figure out how to deal with an administration that is unspeakably cruel And we're doing the very best that we can up here, trying to protect the largest number of people that we can.
I have a question for Dr. Hammami. I'm actually willing to wait and have more outreach and explanation but we have In our county about 30,000 people with unsatisfactory immigration status. And we have about 7500 in our county who were serving and we're trying to get them transferred as smoothly ahead of the game because we have probably the people with the most complex health needs and we want to make sure that they're not left in the lurch But I did somebody who talked about, well are we just putting them on another chopping block?
And I fear that. What about the bigger system? Where are we going if the federal government is cutting off Medi-Cal money for those who serve undocumented? It's all our health depends. Health is the one thing where we really are linked and connected, and we can't just dismiss a group so what about the other 22,500? of people with unsatisfactory immigration status. What can we do about them? They're not technically our patients, but we are the overarching umbrella to begin to talk about how do we navigate For all of us in this very difficult situation, I don't know Dr. Hamami if you have any additional thoughts or suggestions or... I think that's the conversation that I want to hear from the community because that is the issue for all of us.
Thank you Supervisor. You're absolutely right. Let me just say something. I think somebody said on a comment that he used two words The injunctions likely will work and we hope. These are not strategies that I can put into any plan, I cannot do anything based on likely however with that said We are only scratching the surface of a problem. We didn't address this because this is not the item we brought in, but since the conversation is evolving and that maybe this is what a community gathering can work for but Going back to the community and talking about it more and all that is not going to change a decision that is still there. The community cannot change a decision or an executive order, or even a lawsuit but I'm not gonna address that.
We are now dealing with one layer of the problem which is a population insured we know we can reassign and we are reassigning And we will continue to work towards that until we hear otherwise. There is another layer of people that are going be, to be uninsured And they might be of a legal immigration status or a satisfactory immigration status, or not satisfactory immigration status. We have to deal with that. We will have a third population that neither here or there. These are all layers of a problem that we need to address stepwise and this is where the community needs to come in. This is where the health systems and the FQHCs. I'm very happy that Dr. Ashrafian was on the call because Lindsey and I meet with him and his staff almost twice a week by a call just to understand what is he hearing, what can we do and all that.
This is where establishing even the idea the notion of a parallel safety net that maybe does not have any federal connection can maybe be the solution for that but we are not ready to tackle that yet because right now we're dealing with a huge fire that we're trying to put out But down the road, this is what we need to do. And this is where we need the community to weigh in. We need the support. We need all the tools. Delaying this is not gonna solve the problem. It's gonna just push everything down a timeline that is gonna force us to struggle to address all those three problems and more in a very short time where everybody else is struggling to address those And this is where I don't think it's going to be an ideal solution. Right now, I cannot guarantee that there won't be bumps down the road but if you plan six hours to get to a journey that takes you two hours then you can expect bumps.
But if you plan two hours to get to a journey in six hours, you will never get there.
3:44 – 3:5425 turns
Supervisor Nelson?
Yes thank you Chair Kaps. We're talking about two issues here, right? The underlying issue and we are also talking about this HR issue too. And so you know if we do move forward a delay it may give us some additional time to maybe hear back about now that we've had this public conversation about these positions about What are we doing? And so maybe when this report comes back to the board, we're going to maybe have some more certainty for our employees at that point where we looked at some of the bumping rights looking at some of the reassignments so that we can refine these numbers potentially. So that's one of the other positives that might be able to come back on this as well this meeting.
A duty to do that, make sure the duty to care. So again I'm supportive of some delay as if nothing else but to send a signal back to some of our community that feels like they're being not heard or listened But eventually we'll come back and have to decide what to do with these 52 spots. And right now, it seems that if we aren't going to be able without the revenue to justify them there were gonna have to at some point make some cuts there. And so you know I see that I absorbed that I'm ready to make that decision when that time comes but I do hopefully get here a little bit more from HR between now and that point So that we might be able to refine those numbers down. Again, you know there's a community conversation around health services but there's also this internal conversation we're having among county employees at the same time and now that it's out there, now it's public, now we can start to talk about it and start to get some better information and I hope that when we do bring this back that we'll be able to have some better answers for our employees and for us as board members.
Supervisor Hartman. I think we need to have a time certain and I think we need to define what we want to see listed out in a motion for public process.
Well, it's my motion to continue it and I'd rather just work with County Health to bring it back or just you're welcome to do that if you'd like to.
I would like to know what we expect. I mean, this is you and County Health. I think this is all of us and I think we need to define what we expect to be done.
But I'm just not sure you support the continuance so if...
Oh, I think you've heard from a majority including me. If we have a time certain, I don't think we continue it without trying to define how long I don't think that's...
Again, I'm looking to understand more about the lawsuit. I'm looking to understand if we can have more engagement with the community. I don' see that it needs to be longer than several weeks but again Assistant CEO Horton
If I may make a recommendation, if we bring it back on the 18th, we still do have a structural imbalance in this current fiscal year that this board needs to address. And if we're not going to implement this plan, that means that if we're going to do an alternative, it's going to take a four-fifths vote to do that. So what would be helpful is when the motion does come, that if there were four-fifths to bring this back I would recommend on the 18th, and then I also recommend that the board direct the HR director to work with the unions to see if there are options to help mitigate any potential layoffs that we are looking at if we're to implement this plan.
And we're still talking about item one correct? Just talking about item one. Okay just public health all right.
And when you said the 18th do you mean October 18th?
November.
November 18th. November
18th
okay
I'm comfortable. Yeah, that gives us enough time to take a breath and actually have some meaningful conversations in the community and do some meaningful work. One of my questions like I wanted to have clarified though is you know assuming that these services are going to go away and we're no longer gonna have the ability to get that revenue from our health centers At what point from an HR perspective or a budgetary perspective do we have to make this decision? Is it a week before, is it a month before? I mean at what point do we have to legally make that decision. I guess that's really what we have to build back from.
Chair Capstan, Supervisor Nelson and the board. We have a civil service rule that says that we need to give employees who are going to be laid off 30 days notice. We'd like to give them more. We have in the past but that is sort of the minimum we could do so in order to act we would have to send those notices out As you know, we have very complicated layoff and seniority rules around if a position is eliminated how we reallocate folks into the remaining positions. Those are very complicated. We're working through those now and we can continue to work through those. But we'd probably need at least I would say November 18th is the latest. We need to know so that we could get those abstracts finished to the union and be ready to issue those layoff notices by December 5th.
We also have, we've already started conversations with our labor unions and we need to give them notice that this is coming in the opportunity to bargain over the impacts We've already started those discussions and I know that our partners would be very interested in continuing to work with us on that. We can continue those discussions in the interim as well, so I would say November 18th would be sort of the latest we could really reasonably act in time to make those civil service layoff notice deadlines.
Okay. Supervisor Hartman? Thank you. Another HR question. So we have rules for how to allocate jobs internally from people whose position is targeted. Could you describe a little bit more what we do or could do to help people transfer to our partner health care agencies?
Certainly, we have had discussions about doing an internal job fair where we invite some of those folks and work with our union to help identify folks that we might bring in other employers in and invite our employees to come meet with those employers, share their resume so we can do that. We will also be doing that with our own departments so providing our chances for employees who might be affected to talk to our own departments about any vacancies there. So that's as far as placement In the past, we've asked our workplace workforce folks to come also and help with that effort to help employees kind of get out there and find other employment. The other things that we do are related to what is unemployment insurance? And how do you apply for it?
How long does it last in helping to answer some of those questions for our employees benefits continuation and things like that so we have a whole structure in place to start those discussions with employees and to support the people who might be affected.
Do you have any idea how many internal jobs we might have vacancies?
Right now outside of, we have 40 that were recruiting for right now and some of those may include a couple of actual vacancies but we do have that 240 ish funded unfilled positions. Now, a person still has to be qualified to take those positions and willing to take those positions but those are all things that we would be talking to affected employees about and sharing that information with them.
Great. Well, I think I'm prepared to make a motion that we continue this item until November 18th with the direction for the department to do additional stakeholder outreach and as well as work with the unions on additional help me with it with the language here Labor negotiations?
If you could direct HR to coordinate with the unions for if there's any concessions that can be made to mitigate potential layoffs.
Okay, and a third component if it's appropriate too she would do it probably anyway but to continue to have County Council keep the board apprised of steps along the way with litigation and the injunction. So those three pieces?
I'll second that motion.
Roll-call vote 0–0 motion. OK, do we need a roll call · 5 under review
Show transcript
3:55 – 4:108 turns
and Supervisors I'm Daniel Nielsen your director of your Department of Social Services.
Actually I'm sorry I got ahead of myself
our Madam Clerk will read it into the record. Thank you Chair Kaps and members of the board although this item was previously read into the record I just wanted to remind The public that we are now going to departmental item number 2 from the social services Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the Department of Social Services DSS fiscal year 2025 through 2026 budget update and rebalancing plan
With me today Is chief assistant financial, excuse me Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Rachel Lipman Assistant Director Amy Krueger and Assistant Director Maria Gardner. What do I have to click to make it come up?
And if we can have the presentation... Oh,
there we go. At the April budget workshops and again in June and July, I told your board that I would that I would bring back from the Department of Social Services an in-depth discussion of our funding structure and structural imbalance as well as an update on our current year's budget, and to provide a forecast of fiscal year 26-27 to the best of our ability at this time.
We knew in June that 1991 and 2011 realignment revenues had been decreased in the May revise, causing us an anticipated budget shortfall in the current year of over $1.5 million even as our budget was being adopted. We knew in July we would be operating in the current year with almost $1 .7 million less realignment in general fund due to those funds needing to be moved to the prior year to be able to close the fiscal year 24-25 books, largely as a result of having overspent our categorical aid budget in that year.
I would like to focus now on some of the major factors associated with our ongoing structural imbalance. 1991 and 2011 Reliant revenues, which come from state sales taxes and vehicle license fees are a major source of our revenue at over $42 million, which is 19% of our total revenue in the current year. They have decreased by 6% since fiscal year 22-23. These funds are used along with general fund to pay our mandatory maintenance of effort in some programs and they were also used to match As the local match to state and federal funds.
Any decrease in these funds leaves us unable to tap into the associated state and federal funds to pay staff as well as for non-labor items. The Medi-Cal allocation of approximately $40 million is one of our allocations that fully pays for the administration of a program. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of a multiyear freeze from the state on the cost of living increases that had previously been negotiated with the state for the administration of the Medi-Cal program meaning that all of the increases in salary and benefits as well as overhead costs associated with the operation of the Medi Cal program are not covered by any additional revenue This causes the number of staff we can afford in this program to shrink each year and overhead costs to be displaced to other program and administrative areas.
When we turn our attention to expenditures, we see that from fiscal year 22-23, our average cost per employee has grown by 18% and approximately 20% of our average cost per employee for salary and benefits is paid for by realignment and county general fund. Our categorical aid costs, which includes the non-labor costs associated with foster care placements, adoptions placements, CalWORKs and 34 other programs have risen by $12.4 million of which 5.3 million dollars is local cost paid by realignment and general fund I will take a minute to mention that we currently have seven high-needs youth in foster care that are costing us $138,000 per month above the state rate for placements and unexpected costs like these can escalate quickly.
Our In Home Supportive Service maintenance of effort which is all 1991 realignment and County General Fund has grown by 2.5 million dollars And our county central service charges have increased by $2.2 million, of which 16% is realignment and County General Fund. Unfortunately as we entered the current fiscal year, we found that we had additional compounding problems beyond the reduction of anticipated realignment revenue of one and a half million dollars.
We took another look at the costs of our categorical aid programs and decided that we needed to update and increase the planned expenditures in that area by $2.6 million over our adopted budget based on the trends that we have seen occurring in the first six months of 2025, which were not reflected in the budget we submitted last February. That has an impact on our local funds of about 1.3 million dollars.
We also realized that we had not been achieving the level of salary savings that had been built into the budget we submitted in February and would not be doing so for the remainder of the year. So, we've adjusted our salary savings at an additional adjustment to the budget of 1.8 million dollars in local cost. This slide simply demonstrates what I have just discussed. Our structural deficit in the prior two fiscal years was addressed by the use of fund balance and one-time monies.
In fiscal year 22-23, we also had a structural imbalance but it was hidden by high levels of salary savings and one time state funds left over from COVID. In the current year once we have put expenditures in alignment with revenues We will still be operating on $2.8 million of one-time money in the end to balance in the current year after all the factors I have covered so far, we were left to solve for a 4.6 million dollar gap and local funds as detailed on the prior slide.
This slide reflects what we have done to date to reduce the size of the staff reduction that is now needed to achieve a balanced budget We reorganized wherever possible to achieve efficiencies. We held positions vacant starting in the third quarter of the prior year and into the current year, which is why we currently have 56 vacant positions that were approved in the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget for the current year.
We have significantly reduced contracted services for families and children in the child welfare area We eliminated non-emergency overtime. We eliminated non-essential travel. We reduced training contracts. We eliminated computer replacement for the current year, but we will need to restore that in our fiscal year 26-27 budget at some minimal level. We eliminated vehicle replacements, but will need to restore that on a minimal level in next year's budget.
We have aligned all staff with all funding sources in such a way as to maximize any capped allocations, with the exception of the CalFresh program where we do not have the local match to maximize that allocation. After all possible actions by the department, we are left with the need to reduce our staffing levels by 121 positions that were considered funded in the current year's budget but for which the department does not have adequate local funding. 56 of these are vacant and 65 are filled.
The 18 classifications impacted include social workers, case aides, eligibility workers, department business specialists, administrative office professionals and managers. Within the non-management positions listed those include line staff as well as supervisors. And the details of this are on page 6 of your board letter or page 15 of attachment A. This reduction will reduce the number of staff working in various program areas while the work needing to be done continues to increase as demonstrated on pages 10 through 14 of your staff report which is attachment A.
Taking a brief moment to look ahead into fiscal year 26-27, In October of 2026, the county will be faced with the need to increase by $2.6 million annually the general fund match for the administration of the CalFresh program due to HR 1. At the same time, the state will also be hit with a 50% increase to their share of costs for the administration of this program.
The department will be losing our 2.8 million dollars of one-time general fund that we have in the current year Of which $2.3 million is currently paying some of the mandated local share of our categorical aid programs, $300,000 is paying for some of the local share costs in child welfare and $200,000 is paying some of the local share cost in the CalFresh program.
While it is possible that ongoing attrition between now and the end of June could solve some or all of the $500,000 that is currently paying for staffing, the 2.3 million currently paying Our funding for the administration of the Medi-Cal program will continue to be flat, resulting in our need to have fewer staff in that area. And the shifting of some overhead costs being pushed to other program areas, thus impacting their budgets.
We are planning only a 2% growth in our realignment revenues which might be optimistic. We will get an updated estimate from the governor in January when he puts out his budget and then an updated perspective from the state at the time of the May revise. We have significant concerns about the escalation of the categorical aid costs, as indicated by our increasing our budget in the current year above adopted budget level to address that.
And the structural imbalance in the department will continue when we look at anticipated revenues in light of growing and new costs. We will of course be working with the CO's office as we prepare our budget for fiscal year 26-27 and incorporate whatever is relevant from the governor's January budget As we prepare to come back to your board at the April budget workshops, but we should not be expecting any bailouts from the state.
In addition to the fact that the state overspent their Medi-Cal budget by over 100% in the last fiscal year and has made only modest changes in that program to mitigate that level of spending and the fact that we are facing a 50% increase That they are facing a 50% increase in their share of costs for the administration of the CalFresh program. In October of 2026, they are also facing an additional $2 billion in cost in October of 2020 27 as a result of HR 1 when the federal government requires states to start paying a share of the benefits and the CalFresh program.
And that will be each state will be based upon their error rates that they have. Our department has never had the funds to serve our community as promptly and completely as we would have liked, with some years being better than others. However, we are very experienced at directing our available resources to the most urgent need and then doing the best we can with the remaining parts of our work.
While no mandated programs or services will be eliminated as a result of the reductions we have made and the staffing reductions we are proposing And while we will continue our long-standing pattern of prioritizing our work to make sure vulnerable children and adults receive prompt attention, delays in processing times in the Employment and Eligibility Services area will likely increase as will delays in the Adult and Children's area for people who are not at immediate risk of abuse or neglect.
We have always done our best to serve our entire population as best as possible and as quickly as possible with the resources we have, and we will continue to do so. If these staffing reductions are approved We will be closely tracking performance measures and service level impacts in the first three months of the coming year so that we can report to your board at the April budget workshop what we are seeing on the ground as a result of those reductions, as you consider the fiscal year 26-27 budget gap that we will have.
This concludes my presentation and I ask that your board approve actions A through C. The department will be submitting an updated budget reflecting all of our adjustments in the totality of our structuring plan within the next 60 days so that we will have an accurate adopted budget to refer to as we move through the rest of the year, and I'm happy to take your questions.
Thank you Director Nielsen. Questions from the Board? Supervisor Nielsen
Yes, thank you Chair Kaps. Thank you Director Nielsen for your presentation. As you guys have gone through and decided where you're going to make the cuts I mean are were there other programs you guys looked at potentially You know, reduce that to move funds around. I mean what you know where there's some you know we have the maize in the shelves and you know I just I'm just kind of curious on you know are there other things out there that were doing right now?
That are not have to do is you know the things that we don't necessarily have to do within your budget that those funds could be allocated to kind of backfill some of these areas that exist so I was you Yes, without singling out any single program or there's still some things out on the table that you guys might be able to look at as you guys. You know look to fill some of these holes
4:10 – 4:1916 turns
there so to answer your question kind of answer your question kind of fully Supervisor Nelson through the chair. You know when we sit down to look at how are we going to balance our budget? you know our first perspective was, you know, we need all these people doing what they need to be doing and But on the other hand, you know, we can't afford them so we looked through and basically went through like the you know, essential to have versus the nice to have.
And very quickly without balancing our budget got to digging into and having to put people on the list that we consider to be the essential to have. So we have clearly gone into what we perceive components of essential to have in terms of some of the positions or the numbers listed in those classifications. In my budget, I have a very small amount of general fund. Some of which is routed through the department based upon prior board decisions that adds up to Less than $200,000 of general fund or about 200,000 of general fund and those things are on our list that we've provided to the CEO's office of places that we could still further additionally reduce.
But every single one of those would require the board to stop and reflect because it's things the boards has asked us to do in the past or to be responsible for in the past So we didn't cut those yet, but they are on our list for the CEO's office to look at as we're looking at reductions in all departments. So things only make up $200,000? Yes.
So it's not a whole lot that can plug some of the holes that we're talking about. Right,
right yeah and that's why we you know we didn't cause discussion to happen about them sooner because they do add up to being such a small
amount. And again I'm talking in obviously vagueness here but $200,000 at general fund but there are other funds that fund some those programs?
No those are things that general fund is paying for
All right. Are there other past board priorities that are being funded through other sources within your department? No, okay. That's what I wanted to check. All right, and I think we all had heard from various social services workers that probably all met with us and many discussions are about the current backlog whether it's eligibility filings or child welfare services or adoptions. We're already not meeting targets now and we're going to be reducing staff.
Can you just I know you guys are constantly evaluating systems, but can you speak to that?
Well, Supervisor Nelson through the Chair. So each year in the April budget workshops when we share our performance measures there's usually one or two or three that were not meeting. The one prior to COVID that we were always not meeting was the redeterminations and Medi-Cal because we were always trying to get the people on Medi-Cal and then putting the rest of the staff, you know as fast as they could to do the determinations but we are always lagging in that area.
I think Assistant Director Krueger has a couple areas that have been reported onto the board where we're below the expectation in child welfare one of which we really don't have a lot of control over So yes, it's true. I mean we as we have held positions vacant like we had positions that were voluntarily vacated in the adoptions program and we held those vacant so that increases the workload there.
We're constantly and we have always operated on the perspective of if we're short on resources which I mean we might look fully staffed but then we might have an unusual high period leaves of absence for other things and so we're constantly rerouting resources to where the most urgent need is. And in Amy's area that's always the emergency response for adults and for children, and in Maria's area that's always the applications for CalFresh so people can get their food assistance as quickly as possible and for Medi-Cal so they can have health coverage. So you know these reductions will put us in some places further behind in terms of nothing won't you know, nothing will never not get done.
It'll just be a matter of sometimes it'll be slower than other times and then that will also be impacted by variations and staff attendance at work or leaves or other things like that right so and those sorts of adjustments are made on a daily basis anyway.
I have another question in a moment but
Okay. Thank you, Director Nielsen. Can you please go to your slide number three? I just had some questions about the numbers.
Can I have my slides back up? Which slide did you want?
Number three because we toss around You know, the term realignment and I just want to make sure the public folks understand because fundamentally the crunch here is based on the fact that the state is not reimbursing us for the services or not paying for. So can you explain it? Because I think it's really important. I mean a lot of the emails that we receive it's you know the impression is that we're just
I would be happy to, Chair Kaps, keeping in mind that fiscal experts in my field spend half days doing realignment seminars. But in 1991 and again in 2011 the state decided rather than us parsing out money to each of the counties each year that we're going to give you what we consider the state portion for these programs You're still expected to put forward your county portion of whatever that was previously, but we're going to give you the state portion by way of realignment. But the realignment was based upon The realignment goes to multiple programs, including law enforcement, behavioral wellness, myself. And each time they've done realignment they've portioned out like OK what percentage goes to which type of activity?
But it's based upon sales taxes and vehicle license fees. And so those go up and down. And in years where we've had fund balance and other situations where our budget wasn't stretched tight Little ups and downs didn't really impact us or show up on the radar. You know the situation we're currently in, I mean like we're literally meeting each month now with our fiscal team looking at okay what did realignment come in last month compared to what we had budgeted.
But similarly you know related to expenditures like categorical aid so from the state's perspective you know the state can look at the facts and see yes you know a county is getting less realignment than they were two or three years ago because Sales taxes are down, vehicle license fees are down. But their perspective is that's your money to work with. That's your money to... So we have all these mandated services but our level of service in most areas is not mandated and so the state's perspective is make it work the best you can, do the best you can. It totally ignores the reality of pay and benefit increases, and increased costs of workers' comp.
There's nothing built in there to cause a county to receive a certain additional amount. Now on the Medi-Cal program about three or four years ago, the state negotiated with the California Welfare Directors Association and agreed to a 2% annual cost of living increase for the administration of the Medi-Cal program. But then like a year, year and half later they froze it. And we're in our second year before your freeze on that. So even where we've made progress to try to get the state to recognize ongoing increasing costs, you know it sometimes gets pulled out from under us.
Got it okay
and there's just a further answer the realignment question there are certain specific programs and if you want to know one of my assistants can tell you because or I have it there are certain programs within our world That were realigned in 1991 and some additional ones that were added into 2011. And then some of that we're just kind of reaffirmed is still being realigned but if you want to know I can tell you those. Sure
yeah OK. So in 1991
realignment CalWORKs, Employment Services, In-Home Supportive Services, Foster Care, Child Welfare Services and Adoptions were realigned from the state to the counties. And then in 2011 you'll see some repeats because it basically reaffirmed foster care, child welfare services adoptions, adult protective services and then the child abuse prevention intervention and treatment.
So those are the program areas that we use for realignment. There's other monies that we get from the state in allocations, like we have an allocation for the administration of the In Home Supportive Service Program. We have an allocation for the public authority. We have our Medi-Cal allocation so we have specific allocations where the state says here is what it is.
4:19 – 4:3610 turns
So I just, I wanted to ask because it was brought up in public comment and I had the same questions about just pots of funding. So this is a question for the CEO's office either one of you. You know, we did just provide more funding to the Sheriff's Department when they had some overtime issues. Why is that? Why do we do that? Why is that easier to do in terms of revenue streams? It was uncomfortable. I know I feel that now as you look at I think it's helpful to at least have the answer as to what, how these funds are treated differently.
Chair Kapp so the sheriff's roughly four and a half million dollar year end fiscal issue that was covered by I just want to make sure that we're getting the message across. The cost units inside of it, multiple departments can be negative if the fund as a whole is positive this particular year on July 15th your board did hear that action from the sheriff Did approve a budget revision that allocated, I think it was roughly $4.2 million to their S&B because of the overage at the year end. That was a four-fifths vote as was required at the time but Because it was at the end of the year and the funds were out the door already, it had been spent. That is why that felt a little I think different than department coming now proactively looking at their budget and projecting what's ahead and saying this is what we have to do to balance this fiscal year rather than running out of money sometime down the line.
A little simpler explanation on that is the Sheriff is a general fund. It's it's it's a different color of money and where social services is they have a mix of funds, and it's the color of money that funds these programs so there are special revenue fund. That means that funding that comes to them can only be spent in this in this certain area whereas the general fund is more broad So there's a structural deficit now with these special revenue funds that are coming in, where our costs are exceeding our revenues that are coming in and that's how we find ourselves in this situation.
Supervisor Hartman.
Just a quick follow on, so we have a policy or what is the nature of the commitment to not backfill with general fund money special fund accounts?
So it's more of a sustainability issue. If you have services that are funded from state and federal dollars, if you start backfilling from general fund, if the general funds available for the public it would be like paying your mortgage with your savings account versus your checking account? So that funding that's coming in and services that are dependent on those state and federal dollars, when those expenditures are too high and there's not enough money to pay for those. If you start using your general fund, there's an opportunity cost there and you're gonna have to cut services that that general fund then covers elsewhere in the county than other county services or services.
So is it just the board that's a discretionary, those are discretionary dollars at the fund that the board does have control over. But if you use those funds or they're not typically used, that means you have to cut somewhere else to make up for that?
Are we going to, so I'm just curious like I've got a lot to say but that's basically my whole thing right now. But I don't know if we're going into deliberation are we is there gonna be public comment on number two again or not?
Just double-checking if you'd like let's just ask the clerk if they're...I don't think there it is any public comment
Chair Kaps and members of the board, I haven't received any additional requests to speak separately on departmental item number two. We did take the speaker's slips we did receive for D2 during D1 and I believe most members of the public have left Santa Maria. Okay so let's
get into it okay let's get into it thank you. So Dan I don't have any questions for you. And you know I feel for the department heads that are there they're basically implementing They're following through on the policies that we've directed in the past, right? So they're taking with the best information that they have make a recommendation and then it's back to us. So I think they're doing an outstanding job but first I wanna thank all the employees that were here today.
What was interesting is when you hear them when they were speaking to a person who talked about if you lost your job The impacts that you were talking about, what are the people that you serve? Right. And that's why I think you guys all are in social services and you're in public health is because the first thought you had was well if I'm not there somebody is not going to be able to get CalFresh on time or somebody's child welfare case isn't gonna be worked quick enough.
Very little did they ever talk about themselves. And I guarantee you, when I was facing losing my job, my number one concern was me and so I really appreciate a lot of that. Give a perspective to folks out there too that are watching social services we have 828 full-time equivalency positions it's 20% of our entire workforce. I mean social services is The county, this is what we do. This is why we are up here, it's because we're interested in providing a social safety net for folks and I hate to go back into a history lesson but I want to because I want the employees to understand why decisions are important that this board makes.
Nobody else was here when this decision was made but this is the reason why we are here today. In 2015 Okay, so the reason why Paul needs that $14 million that we can't spend on this is because we're gonna need to borrow money to build a new jail. An add-on to the existing jail or under court order there's a lot of reasons why we have to do that. The price tag on my jail right now is probably about $165 million okay?
In 2015 the state offered to build that for us And they were gonna pay 90% of the construction costs, which at that time was $40 million. It was gonna cost us about two million dollars a year to operate that jail but we decided not to do it because it was too expensive and we didn't think we could afford it. Fast forward 10 years, we're sitting here today, we've gotta build that jail It's gonna cost us $165 million.
So we just made a $125 million mistake 10 years ago, and that's the reason why we don't have the funds to be able to use the excess that we had this year. So we gotta go out and borrow $165 million which is gonna cost us $12 million a year for 20 years to pay off that fund, that loan And so what Paul's trying to do is, we have 14 million extra dollars in general fund right now and he's saying hey the smart thing to do is borrow as little as possible just like when you're buying a house. We gotta buy a jail. You wanna borrow as little as possible so you want the biggest down payment that you can have. So he's putting trying to get together every dollar that he can which makes sense.
I support that, I supported it. But we're in a crisis situation right now You can't, we cannot make a mistake in social services. We really can't make a mistake in a lot of places but if we forget to pave the road or our art department you know, we don't hold the chalk festival or something it's people that's a problem but LA County just had a settlement against them, they just paid out a $20 million settlement because the case of a kid fell through the cracks in child welfare. You can't have that happen. It's not just the 20 million bucks, it was a horrific situation and there's the morality of it and there's the budget side of it but regardless you cannot make a mistake there so You know, I'm looking at this differently that I've never supported backfilling general fund.
I mean state and federal funds with General Fund. I did last year for social services one time but I think this is a time for us to look at this as we got to look at this as a countywide problem This is not just a social services problem. We can't look at this as social services is in a deficit, so social services has to fix it if they can't we just got to lay off the employees were already hearing We're not meeting, we're barely meeting standards right now. And we can't get ourselves in a position where you know and I always hear, I understand that I think it pays to have been poor at one time in my life so when people say well you'll still get the benefit but you get 30 days or 60 days delayed they'll back pay you dude you don't have 30 days or 60 days you have till Friday and then you need to put gas in your car or you need to feed your family so When Bob, when Supervisor Nelson asked for what other things are you doing in your department that aren't mandated that we should look at?
Your list is very small. I understand that but throughout the entire county, I know there are tons of things that we're doing that are great things. They're great work. It's great work in the community. We're not mandated to do those things and this situation calls for us to be able to go through that list. I want to see a list. What are all the things that were doing That we aren't mandated to do.
Now there's gonna be some tough decisions along the way, you know? Do we cut library funding to some of our cities? Do we cut back in our art department, and I used art twice now, I'm sorry they're gonna come after me but there are so many things that we do in this county that are great, we aren' mandated to do. I think it's a disservice to all of us up here to have to make a decision Just on what's inside social services instead of saying okay, give me all let me see everything that we're doing and make a better decision as a whole.
And the only way you can really do that is inside of a budget and April is not that far away. So what I'd like to see us try to do is somehow I think first off you do have to eliminate the funded vacant positions inside social services that makes sense let's do that first guy and let's figure out what that not is then to get to April or to June and make a make an overall budget decision about.
What are our priorities. I asked for from HR and they gave me the great list. I got already of all the vacant funded positions inside the county, there's a lot of them and I know every department is saying well don't go after mine because I have to come up with 5% cuts for next year. Hey everything's on the table right now this crisis. And number four, I know you guys get tired of me talking about warrants till I finally got it done But we have to have an adult conversation about the retirement fund and what's happening with that. That's a big part of this county that I think maybe because I sit on the Retirement Board, I see it a lot more than you guys don't see as much but...
We're currently paying 38% of payroll as part is to offset everybody's retirement dollars Because we're paying off the losses that we had during the great financial disaster. By 2031, we're only gonna be paying 18%, okay? So that's a huge difference. We're talking tens of millions of dollars. Now some people will say well that's pie in the sky, it's something that's gonna happen in the future.
I need to have a presentation by an actuarial that puts out a report every year on the Board of Retirement to tell us what that's going to look like. Because if we had $100 million disaster cliff coming in the future, we'd be talking about it all the time up here. But when we have good news that's projected some reason nobody wants to talk about it and I've been okay with that. I've talked about it a little bit but I've kind of kept it a little bit down but now we're talking about laying people off. I can't do that knowing what I know We are going to see significantly better days once the retirement shortfall is paid off.
Now, are there other indicators out there that maybe something could happen between now and 2030 or 2031? It's a possibility. But it doesn't mean that large chunk of that money is still gonna come our way. So while I think it might be 40 million, some others say 30 million, some say 20, it's gonna be more than 2 million. It's gonna be more than 5 million. So we need to have, you know, I think to have the CEO of the SBCR system come in and give us a presentation, look at the actuarial, even have the actuarial outside counsel with us to kind of walk us through it and plan for it.
Because honestly this is just the tip of the iceberg I see in this department and we're gonna talk about laying people off and others are going to have these same situations We're gonna have to come up with an overall overarching strategy. This just seems like we're looking at the first one that popped up and it happens to be social services, and we're like well let's fix it inside that department. We can't lay the people off.
I can't do that. So what I would like to see is going back, I'd like to see eliminate the funded vacancies inside social services. Return with a report on non-mandated services and programs that we're providing currently at the county. I'd like to have SB CSRS come in and provide us with a report on what the outlook looks like four or five six years from now.
need all vacant positions identified inside the county, which HR has already given me that report. But I'd like to drill down a little bit on that too as far as like hey are some of these you know how long have they been open? They've been open for longer than a year and we're not aggressively actively pursuing somebody for that position then we got to talk about maybe eliminating that position so I look at this as it's an overall County problem And although I haven't been excited about, you know, cross pollinating general fund with restricted funds. I think this calls for a change in policy for once so that's where I'm at.
4:36 – 4:424 turns
Thank you. Thanks for putting that out there. Supervisor Nelson?
Yes, I do have one question for staff and then I'll get into deliberations actually it's for HR. As we've just talked about with public health there was some direction to talk to the union about potential concessions to be able to minimize this. Are those conversations also happening with social services or are you intending to have some of those conversations?
Yes, we are in conversation with local 721 which is the SEIU local that represents a lot of the employees in the social services department about labor concessions. They would have to agree to anything so you know but we certainly will approach them about asking them for their help in trying to solve the problem of budget shortfalls for these positions.
Okay, thank you I just wanted to make sure that those conversations are happening. I know that some of our social service employees are some of our lowest paid so it's a much more difficult conversation than just incremental cuts there but if you know there is a large amount of employees there and so you know as we all try to find that solution Conflicted here. You know, I'm with Supervisor Lavinino on the urgency on solving some of these problems within this department especially on the child welfare services side with our foster families and our adoptive kids those kids in crisis.
I see this you know hand-in-hand with any level of public safety that we offer at the county it's an absolute safety net piece you know our children are most vulnerable they didn't choose to be born where they were born or into situations that they were a part And you know, you are a very important part of that and the families who step up to serve. You know I don't wear it on my sleeve but I'm an adoptive parent myself and I know the uncertainty of going through the adoption process and how heart wrenching that is and how much we need a process that we have somebody that can serve us to get through that.
And you know talking to some your employees yesterday and just talking about that backlog and just reliving that for myself, it is heartbreaking. And it's something we have to get our arms around. I see a backfill as a way to potentially bridge Let's bring us current, and then let's build the systems that we need to in place to really what is true real staffing here. I think Supervisor Labenino looks to the future and sees potential you know additional revenue that we might be able to, or actually less expenses so therefore more revenue that we might have. But that's in the general fund but it's also in some of our special departments right? You know because we're obviously, our employee costs should go down and social services. So money right now that we're paying for to pay off the debts of past generations of decisions You know, it wasn't just the Great Depression.
It was a recession. It was also some decisions that were made by unions and elected officials to maybe make some retirement benefits a little bit more generous than what we could afford to do. And so we're paying those off and now we have most of our employees that are post-PEPRA. They don't receive those benefits but they deal with the consequences. I mean, so you know, I do see it as A light at the end of the tunnel here for us as a county to get to that point, but I am definitely interested in finding ways to bridge it in between. I can't imagine the families and the children that are suffering because of the lack of services that we're not be able to do. And I know you guys just do the best with what you're given and how it's dealt with within You know, yes eligibility workers not trying to minimize that but I do want to put an extra effort and energy behind Child Welfare Services and the work you guys are doing there.
I hope we can talk to the union and see if there's ways to solve some of the problems there. And I hope we can also look at some of our other dollars that might have available. But we do have to figure this out because this is just for this year. You know, we know next year is going to be even worse. So you know that's the part that I'm struggling with. And then with Supervisor Lavanino, I think next year's budget we're gonna have some real honest conversations about what is most important in our county. We have certain responsibilities that the only things You know and so that's what we you know I think we should prioritize.
Public safety is the top of that list and our social safety net is what we're here at the county to a big part of our job, so I think we really need to look at that long and hard especially as we have all these backlogs again I want to keep coming back to that that I would like to plug those You know, maybe bring in extra help in some way to tackle some of these problems. Kind of getting us current and figuring out what the sustainability of this department is. And that may be when those future pension savings come into place and then we are able to staff up accordingly but we definitely need to get our arms around it now. We can't continue to fall further and further behind with some of these metrics. You know, we've got children and families whose lives are at stake and it's something I want to find a way and I'm glad that you came out so strong on that Supervisor Lavagnino because it really is inspirational because it really is that important.
4:42 – 4:4713 turns
Supervisor Hartman. I have a question, I think for our budget director so we Department of Social Services made cuts and we had the bridge for the 2.8 million and so that was to deal with this year's budget shortfall but I think we're still falling short and how much? And what do we do about that if we would follow Supervisor Lavinino suggestion
Supervisor Hartman through the chair. So correct, your board directed $3.4 million general fund one time to help plug the social services gap in the 25-26 budget to avoid layoffs really that would have had to have happened July 1. They ended up needing to use $600,000 of that to close their year-end issues. So that's the 2.8 million they have left in the current year budget that they talked about.
On top of that with what they've presented today, their gap is about 4.7 million in the current year that needs to be solved and that's the presentation and plan they presented to solve that gap. A good chunk of that is funded vacant positions, but there is my understanding from the department probably about $2.3 million worth of that gap would be local match for the currently filled positions that are proposed to be cut.
So $4.7 million total gap, 2.8 million on top of that when that one-time funding runs out and will have to be dealt with next year. 2.3 million of that is the filled positions that we're talking about. So that would have to be addressed. The whole 4.7 million would need to be addressed in some manner this year either through the reductions being proposed or additional funding being provided to the department which would be a four fifths vote to do that They don't have any fund balance left, so really the only viable other source is general fund.
And then looking ahead to the next year would be likely through the five-year forecast we'll be presenting in January and then the April budget workshop specific to the 26-27 budget where we would be talking more holistically about The whole county situation will have a better picture than of the general fund deficit we're looking at. The debt service, all the other things we see coming that are limited general fund dollars will have to be used to address.
Yeah I guess what I conclude is that the money that we have in tax revenues that came over what we predicted isn't going to go very far.
Well can I just ask a question right there? Okay so if we eliminate the funded non-filled positions, does that leave us until June?
I'll look to the department if I'm speaking correctly but I believe it's 2.3 million
dollars. So if we made the decision today to eliminate the funded non-filled positions We really have to cover 2.3 and we have 14.5? 14.7
I believe
was the
24-25.
So, I spoke to somebody the other day that was elected Is it on our board? Brought up a really interesting point because for every 14 million, I think it's for every 14 million that we put in. It saves us $1,000,000 a year and in repayment costs on borrowing correct?
On the on the MBJ expansion debt service. That's
our rough estimate at this point. So we're talking about 20 years and he brought up an interesting point. He talked about generational equity which I thought was kind of interesting concept to that We have employees and we have people paying taxes right now. They're paying for the benefits, they're trying to pay for the benefits of what a social services department would be today not so much what the financial cost would be in year 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 when $1 million to us might not be what it is today but... So I think really what it is is we're talking about 2.3 and my idea would be Paul, you can close your ears.
My idea would be I hate to do it but I think I got to take some of that 14-7 and paper it over until next year till we can get a better idea of how we save into the future. That was my thought.
Yeah and I'm, if I may Chair Kaps, I'm open to that. I just want to know how big the fiscal cliff is going to be even in this department given the 2.8? It's not just this it's coming you know next July 1 or June 30 where are we yeah but
4:47 – 4:5524 turns
Supervisor Hartman, would you like to answer? Sure. Okay so Supervisor Hartman through the chair my estimation I'm not the Chief Financial Administrative Officer and I'm not the county's budget officer but my estimation is that the cost the annualized cost of these 65 positions Plus our 2.8 million one time that we have this year, that's going for people or for other stuff now plus the $2.4 million of additional CalFresh match gets us up between 10 and 11 million dollars.
Excuse me, we also have some other IHSS and some other
well there yeah so they're the You know, anything resulting from IHSS negotiations as far as additional costs. But I'd prefer not to address a figure on that right now but that would be something additional.
So I guess here's my concern we're already projected to be in the red for the next fiscal year after this one and now we're loading that up on top of it And I just want us to be mindful of that.
Well, I would have to say I don't think anybody's been more conservative on the budget than me in all these years. I'm always and the reason why is not because of what a lot of people think it might be, it's always because the last thing I want to do is lay people off. And so I've always been wanting to build our reserves and and I think this is the reason why we do that is I mean God forbid we have $47 million in in in
We need that for good credit
rating. No no I know and I'm not saying we go after that but This is to me a change in philosophy You know where, what do they say? Budgets are value statements right. So so what is more important than social services I don't know that's why I want to have that discussion is what is more important because we like I said we do way too many things Mona has got a great quote where she always says we can do everything I mean, we can do anything but we can't do everything. And so we have really extended ourselves in a time when we were prospering for many years and things were great and ideas came forward and we said sounds good let's go fund it, let's go fund it, let's go fund it. Well the world has changed and now we're like okay but I can't make a decision in a vacuum where I'm like well we got to let go of eligibility workers or we gotta let go of child welfare workers when I'm not looking at What about animal services?
I don't know what's more important, you know. So those are decisions that need to be made and we can buy eight months or whatever for two million dollars 2.3 to me that's money well spent so I totally get that we're looking at deficits into the future and normally I'd be railing against this and saying you're being You know, capricious or whatever non yeah. So I just see it differently right now just because I think we're in the world we're in right now there's no department that is needed more in the time frame that we're in right now than this department.
I would agree but I think public health and be well and homeless
and public safety
Yeah, this is a wonderful discussion and I concur. We have the second highest poverty rate in the state of California and these folks are on the front line making sure that state dollars and vital programs like CalFresh people get fed. And we want to continue that and I know we have a deep commitment to that. I want to make sure too that our systems are really sound and that we can do more with less as much as possible but I appreciate where you're going with this I also do appreciate the holistic view. That's kind of what I was getting at by referencing the Sheriff's Department, because I also want to notice that the audit is coming back. I know it's not a huge thing but the fact that we were dealing with just overtime pay and we were calling out an individual who We're going to learn a lot from that department as well.
And I just think if you're putting forward that we need to zoom back a little bit and make some cuts elsewhere, I could support that.
Could I make a comment, perhaps a suggestion? Absolutely. So and the department can correct me on this but on page six of your addendum report only 6% of the department's operating budget comes from the general fund so the long-term structural issue with this department is not going to be solved by the general fund. However, if the will of the board is that you want to look at this challenge in context with the other departments. Well perhaps a suggestion would be that you direct the CEO's office to come back again on November 18th with a budget revision to change DSS's budget eliminating the vacant positions and then an appropriation for the current fiscal year.
To get them through the year, but let us come back with options on where those funds may come from. Because also we can, as Christy mentioned with the last item, we could also work with the unions to see if there's an opportunity for some concession bargaining to help close that gap. But we can come back on the 18th with options, if that's what your board wants to do on how we could potentially close the gap for this current fiscal year. And then in budget workshops in April, we could have those larger discussions about what you wanted us to bring back, Supervisor Lavenino?
And I just also, you brought up vacant positions though too. I mean certainly if a position has been vacant for a long time it's clearly not needed or the manager is not doing enough to fill it so I want to keep that in the mix. I don't...
And I think that's something we could also do at, I think what you're saying is those bigger questions I had about retirement open positions and that stuff we bring back at budget workshop time but just next month is The funding gap to close and also some options of where...
Yeah,
the
funding gap to close for the filled positions. The
vacant
positions would
be eliminated. Okay. I'll take your motion. Wade's motion. We're going to tell Mona this was Wade's
plan.
She'll never leave. I'm hearing a flight being rescheduled right now from somewhere here flying in.
Okay we have, we have a motion and we have a second by Supervisor Hartman. Want to do roll call? Are we all good? Okay all those in favor please say aye.
Aye.
Motion carries. Thank you Director Nielsen and to your team DSS. Okay we just have a couple. We want to go to A5 which we did not hear it's going to take just
4:55 – 4:599 turns
Chair caps and members of the board returning to administrative item number 5 that was previously read into the record this is from the auditor controllers office it is to consider recommendations regarding the June 30th 2025 fiscal year. 2024 through 2025 end internal audit annual reports and we have one request to speak from the public on this item and we're going to Karen Howenstein Karen.
Hello, yes thank you. So I pulled this item because when I started digging into it boy it's a treasure trove for me so we have a couple attachments that I want to bring to our attention they're incredibly important moving forward The report of county vendors who are paid $200,000 plus a year. I'm going to be digging into this and using Coast Audits on YouTube to run playlists regarding this information.
We have an external monitoring report which is of county departments performed by state, federal and other outside agencies. I found this to be incredibly lacking. I'm gonna be looking into that. Then we have security incident and loss of public property reports. Now I consider the $11 million AMR settlement that had to be paid from the County General Fund because our county is self-insured, to be a loss of public property.
It is not being accounted as such. I want to see the individuals who have made illegal And very poor financial decisions for this county to be held accountable. Namely, an individual named Dennis Bozanich. The evidence that exists in the district attorney's investigative files and the sheriff's office investigative files which resulted in Dennis Bozanich your liberal friend Laura and Joan He's very, very liberal.
When you make partisan decisions to protect partisan interests namely individuals and then you invite them back to this venue and treat them like they're honored guests when they're wearing their chinos and their loafers That man needs to be sued and he needs to be held accountable. Every dime he was paid for his position was stolen from this county, he is a criminal and we're gonna get into his relationship and how it intersects with Joyce Dudley on Coast Audits on YouTube.
And we can also play it here during public comment
And that concludes her public comment on administrative item number five.
I'll make a motion to adopt A5.
Okay, I second.
What's that?
Approve staff recs.
Staff recommendation of course.
Second. Okay all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Okay then we are going to move into closed session. County Council please tell us what will be discussing.
4:59 – 5:0213 turns
Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board. In closed session today the items are two items of existing litigation California's homeownership versus the county and Richard Rant LLC versus the county and its Santa Barbara Superior Court cases in the time estimate is 30 to 45 minutes.
Okay so
we'll
be back for the rest of the meeting which is just a little bit about 315 330 Or no three o'clock 315. Thanks. All right we are back from closed session County Council please read us out
Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board. The board met in closed session on two items of existing litigation California's for homeownership versus the county and Richard Vance versus the county. The board took no reportable action.
Okay and our last item of the day is a general public comment. Madam Clerk?
Chair Caps and members of the Board we do have one request to speak from the public on general public comment today and we are going to remain here in Santa Barbara with Kiss the Comedian
We're ready for you. All
right,
I'm back. I just want to make a serious statement right now. They eating the cats and the dogs? No but seriously Larry Lavinino What a great American guy. American, greatest mayor to ever live in Santa Maria and you have a guy like Steve Lavagnino brainwashed by the liberals Left-wing media and MSNBC on his way to an Italian restaurant tonight. He's going to fire all the illegal immigrants, and the guy that is going to make his Fettuccine Alfredo is a legal immigrant. Shame on you Steven Lavinino.
I just want to say that nobody should get fired. God bless you guys for everything you guys do. My name is Kiss the Comedian. Tell your dad, I'm a big fan. Will do.
Were you here for the... Did you hear the hearing? Because we didn't fire anybody by the way. Oh! You didn't? No and I made the motion so just heads up for that
Steve Lavagnino, one of the greatest guys ever in Santa Barbara. What a great day in America! Great day in Santa Barbara. You're invited to the White House. We want you to meet Trump. You're a great guy. You not as bad as they seem. Thank you Steven. Thank you to all of you guys and tell your dad Larry he's the man 30 years baby thank you.
And that concludes general public comment for today.
5:02 – 5:021 turns
Okay thank you everybody and To Larry. We will adjourn to October 14th in Santa Maria.